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COPyRIGHT DEPOSm 



THE MAN tFITH A 
CONSCIENCE 



THE MAN WITH A 
CONSCIENCE 



By 

Charles Roads 

Author of ^''Abnormal Christian,^'' ^^ Rural 
Christendom" etc. 




Philadelphia 

The Westminster Press 

igi2 






COPYRIGHT, 1912 

BY THE TRUSTEES OF THE PRESBYTERIAN BOARD OF PUBLICATION 

AND SABBATH-SCHOOL WORK 



e.Cl.A314037 



CONTENTS 

Introduction 

CHAPTER 

I. The Primitive Law or Love 
11. Business by the Golden Rule — The 
Second Law of Love .... 

III. The Law of Love for the Larger 

Christian Life 

IV. The Scope and Limitations of 

Conscience 

V. In the Court of Conscience . 
VI. The Will, the Moral Executive . 
VII. The Religious Nature to the Aid of 

THE Moral Nature .... 
VIII. Successive Moral Factors in Actual 
Cases before Conscience 
IX. Some Decisive Moral Tests of Judg 

MENTS OF Conscience .... 
X. The Conservation of Self . . 
XI. Realizing the Christian Home 
XII. The Ethics of Social Life 

XIII. Conscientious Business Life . 

XIV. The Duty of the Christian Citizen 
XV. A Vital Member of Christ's Body 

XVI. Conscientious Character as in Chem- 
ical Analysis 

XVII. How Habits Hold Us Fast . 
XVIIL Shall it be ''In His Steps"? . . 



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219 



INTRODUCTION 



TO-DAY the perplexities of the man with a 
conscience may not be more vital than his 
difficulties of creed, but they are more dis- 
tressing. Christian doctrines are with him too 
largely intellectual fogs or mysteries. He feels that 
many of his duties are matters of life and death. 
He will not take time in these crowded days to think 
Christian truths through. They seem like hazy 
abstractions. But in duties he is dealing with flesh 
and blood, with his wife and children, his everyday 
associates, with men and business and life. 

Does he wonder what to do with a wayward son? 
Shall he send him to college, where to the son the 
chief thing may be sports, excesses, and temptations, 
which are the mere incidents to the earnest student? 
Or shall he take him into business, where he will be 
tried as by fire in the handling of money or in 
assuming great responsibilities? What is he to do? 

Or, like the noble Christian manufacturer who 
told of his perplexity, he may be considering the 
question of lowering the wages of his already hard- 
pushed workingmen. I saw the committee sent by 
the men emerge from his office. They were earnest- 

[vii] 



INTRODUCTION 

faced and troubled, and he was just as troubled. 
He was tender of heart and keenly just, but he felt 
compelled to refuse an increase and even to speak 
of a reduction, or the possible necessity of closing 
out his business. And his business is his life work, 
the only thing he knows. What can he do? 

There are scores of such situations. How shall 
one live in a practical way that will also be righteous? 
How shall one be a really Christlike man in home, 
society, business, and in the larger life beyond the 
routine of daily work? How can a man know ''where 
real right doth lie " ? The perplexity is overwhelming. 

Oft in the way have I stood still, 
So much I felt the awfulness of life.* 

Yet Christian ethics is based upon the simplest of 
principles — brotherly love to all men in all the 
relations of hfe. Love is the fulfilling of the whole 
law. Christ's teaching is that all men are full broth- 
ers in the world-wide family of the heavenly Father. 
There are no half-brothers, no stepbrothers, and 
none farther of kin. And the Christ, the Brother of 
all, has blazed the path through the forest. 

Whence then these perplexities? Why are there 
such radically different decisions of good men as to 
vital duties? Manifestly because, though princi- 
ples are simple, appHcations are difficult. Actual 
cases are novel and are usually complicated by many 
conflicting interests. Decisions must be quickly 

* Wordsworth. 
[ viii 1 



INTRODUCTION 

made. Also, general training in Christian law and 
in conscience is lacking; completing the case, finding 
the law in the case, and making the exact applica- 
tion of law to the case like the work of a learned 
judge in the higher courts. 

The apparent conflict of duties is more and more 
pressing as the years pass. Home clamors for its 
rights, the church calls with great opportunities, the 
larger life invites, business or profession demands 
the right of way. But we always have the comfort 
of knowing that the very "conflict of duty and desire 
is an accompaniment of the growing self." The bar- 
barian seldom is troubled with such a conflict, whether 
he be the native savage of the forest, the stunted 
reversion of the city slums, or the brain-arrested, 
heart-chilled aristocrat. 

The difficulty is all the greater because there is 
such confusion of learned thought on the subject of 
conscience. Joseph Cook ^ declares that conscience 
is infaUible within its sphere, that it proves in the 
soul the existence of a real God and his law, that it 
impHes and impresses the certainty of future punish- 
ment. Bishop Butler says, "To preside and govern 
belongs to conscience. Had it strength as it has 
right, had it power as it has manifest authority, it 
would absolutely govern the world." ^ Whewell, on 
the other hand, refuses to recognize conscience as a 
distinct faculty. Bushnell declares the moral nature 

^ Cook, Boston Monday Lectures, " Conscience." 
2 Butler, Sermon. 

[ix] 



INTRODUCTION 

is vastly inferior to the spiritual nature.^ Wuttke 
identifies the moral nature strictly with the spiritual 
nature — "All religion is moral; all morality is 
religion. '^ But he adds to the confusion by saying, 
*^Yet they are not one and the same." While Volk- 
mann, Sully, and others say, "Earlier forms of 
religious sentiment are detached from morality," and 
"The religious emotion is distinct from the moral in 
its origin and development." It will be said by the 
wide-awake man of the street that these philosoph- 
ical disputes mean nothing to him; that he did not 
until now even know of them. But his teachers and 
pastor have known of them, been confused by them, 
and have given the man of the street too great 
a confidence in his own conscience at one time, have 
utterly discounted it at another time, or have never 
spoken helpfully on conscience. One thing, however, 
is sure — if one believes that his conscience by its 
very nature and instinct is a sure guide, one man 
will be complacent although he follows every crooked 
custom of business on the ground of necessity; an- 
other man will go on in habitual crime; while still 
another will regard his abnormal conscience which 
leads him to frown on all amusements and sports 
as the voice of God, which must be obeyed also by 
all around him or he will regard them as terrible 
sinners. 

A scientific study of consciences should include 
not only the conscience of the good man who inno- 
^ Bushnell, Sermon on "The Spirit of Man." 
[x] 



INTRODUCTION 

cently holds that the finely trained conscience is the 
norm, but also the conscience of the bad man and 
the conscience of the child in all stages of his develop- 
ment. The investigator should spend several years 
as a visitor to a great state penitentiary in close 
contact with criminals, as the writer did, and study 
conscience there. He should take up the profession 
of teaching in the public school and the Sunday 
school and make thorough study of the child moral 
nature, including the interesting processes of con- 
science development. He should labor with all kinds 
of people in evangelistic work. Then he should 
observe the mercantile conscience of the man who 
is kind and true at home; the political conscience 
of the citizen who is a faithful church member, and 
the ecclesiastical conscience, which. Professor Bowne 
says, ^'has varied all the way from the puerile to 
the diaboHcal." 

Moral training comes from the man's exercise of 
his own conscience. Every one of the new moral 
problems, which are constantly arising in the rapid 
progress of civilization and the amazing changes of 
business and social conditions, furnishes the field for 
such exercise. How may this exercise of conscience 
best proceed? What godly fathers and mothers 
did fifty years ago was right then, but now in a new 
world, what is right? 

New occasions teach new duties; Time makes ancient good uncouth; 
They must upward still and onward, who would keep abreast of 
Truth; 

[xi] 



INTRODUCTION 

Lo, before us gleam her camp fires! We ourselves must Pilgrims be, 
Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly through the desperate 

winter sea. 
Nor attempt the Future's portal with the Past's blood-rusted key. 

So Lowell speaks. In another poem he describes this 
moral pioneer: 

Come out, then, from the old thoughts and old ways, 

Before you harden to a crystal cold, 
Which the new life can shatter but not mold; 

Freedom for you still waits, still looking backward stays, 

But widens still the irretrievable space. 

Precedents are universally felt to be outgrown. 
What was once the consensus of Christendom is met 
to-day by a consensus very different, or there is an 
entire lack of unanimity of conscience, though there 
is a vastly better Christianity. Other men's deci- 
sions do not apply to-day, for there are new factors. 
Moreover, every sincere man feels that he must be 
true to his own conscience, and that he may not 
hold decisions long in suspense. 

Moral rules ready made for every conceivable case 
are attempted in the Koran, but the Scriptures give 
principles chiefly. This is far better for character 
development. These Christian principles the dis- 
criminating conscience must apply, and this exercise 
is the moral life of true manhood. Mackenzie^ says, 
"Expression of law in particular rules belongs to an 
early stage in moral development.'' Rules are given 
to children helpfully, but if they are continued to 
young people they become harmful. Rules are natu- 
^ Mackenzie, " Ethics," p. 200. 
[xii] 



INTRODUCTION 

rally disputed by young people, for they are able 
to formulate their own rules and apply them. 

The three fundamental laws of Christ correspond 
to the three distinct sections of right living, the three 
realms of moral activity. 

I. The purely self-activity, by self, for self, and 
necessarily independent of others. This is the right- 
ful activity which is essential to personal sustenance 
and self-development. Eating, study, private prayer, 
and the acquisition of personal power are phases of 
this activity. This activity is covered by Christ's 
law, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." 
This law recognizes by implication these personal 
rights and makes them the measure of what rights 
we accord to others. 

II. The strictly business activity, comprising 
transactions between man and man, such as manu- 
facturing, producing, trafficking, and transporting 
material goods for human needs, and in professional 
services to others. In this activity the second law 
of love, the Golden Rule, is operative: "Whatso- 
ever ye would that men should do to you, do ye 
even so them." 

III. The larger Hfe beyond man's duties to self 
and his duties in business relations. This has to do 
with the Hfe lived after working hours and on Sun- 
days, or in working hours beyond business — the life 
of doing good in every possible way and, as far as 
possible, to all men. Here is Christly love to be in 
full play, "A new conomandment I give unto you, 

[ xiii ] 



INTRODUCTION 

that ye love one another; as I have loved you, that 
ye love one another. '^ 

In all our discussion we may be encouraged by 
remembering that it is in the field of the undecided 
problems of conscience that moral culture progresses. 
Moral development comes by the exercise of con- 
science sturdily and strenuously for oneself. The 
great gain of Protestantism is the inaHenable right 
of individual conscience to life, liberty, and the pur- 
suit of righteousness, and not only must this never 
be surrendered, it must be used. 

It is the author's earnest hope that he may be able 
to introduce many men to their moral opportunity 
as wrestlers in conscientious questions; that he may 
open many more problems than he shall be able now 
to solve; that he may not only state moral problems, 
but suggest also the steps in the process of mastering 
them, and that he may then use the results as step- 
ping-stones to still more perplexing and profound 
questions. This is an arena for moral and spiritual 
giants, and it makes other giants. 



[xiv] 



The Man With a Conscience 

I 

THE PRIMITIVE LAW OF LOVE 

THE purely self life, for self and by self, may 
be the farthest removed from selfishness. It 
will never be selfish if it is made a prepara- 
tion for noble purposes beyond sfelf. But it may 
end in self. The stream becomes a swamp quickly 
when it turns in wholly upon itself. 

There is, therefore, a rightful and necessary activity 
for self-conservation and for the growth of individual 
power and character. For this fundamental work a 
man must have time to be alone. Certain results 
can be secured only by his own efforts with little help 
from others. Here the wise man will not desire 
another to help him, and will seldom proffer help 
to his neighbor. 

There is a wide range to these self-isolated activ- 
ities — from the savage man, eating and lounging for 
recuperation, with no scheme for self-growth but the 
physical, to the cultured Christian, seeking in 
ever-widening circles time for intellectual study, for 
esthetic training, for social influence, for spiritual 

[1] 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

meditation and private prayer, and for the best 
condition of his whole nature. This self-activity 
includes, therefore, acquisition for proper use, by self, 
for self and others, of property, knowledge, honors, 
official position, personal powers of every kind. It 
is most effective for all and for the progress of civi- 
lization that every man shoulder his own burden of 
self-activity. The power of personal initiative de- 
pends upon this splendid isolation of individual life 
for the culture of the finest personality, its devel- 
opment and perfecting. Here is the realm where 
another's help, if too great, is harmful. Manli- 
ness and character demand to be let alone. The 
true teacher only stimulates the self-activity of the 
pupil and gives the minimum of assistance in study. 
It is now possible to define exactly what each man 
must do for himself. In eating, for instance, there 
are those who cook and prepare the food for us, but 
upon every man rests the responsibiHty of deciding 
what to eat, how much, and when — a grave respon- 
sibility, indeed, to a thoughtful man who realizes the 
awfulness of having only one life upon this planet 
between the eternities. So also is it a serious mat- 
ter to choose intellectual exercise ground — books, 
schools, and specialties for investigation. Teachers, 
friends, and librarians may act as guides and spec- 
tators, but the man alone must build up himself. 
Others may help him quarry raw material, but he 
cannot delegate to another the cutting of the stones, 
the selection of the plan, the actual placing of the 

[2] 



LOVE TO MEN 

stones, any more than another can be delegated to 
eat his meals with the idea that the strength gained 
by eating will be mysteriously transferred. The self- 
made man is not a special class. Every man, good 
or bad, who amounts to anything is self-made. 

This community of human Kves, thus separated to 
grow each to its best, will in the growing daily touch 
in the school, the home, and in the larger world. 
They ought to touch without trenching upon each 
other's rights, without harm, encroachment, restric- 
tion, or overlapping. Here will apply the primitive 
law of love, the ancient law of Moses, which Christ 
reaflBirmed and made the lowest step of his laws of 
love. We may state it afresh as follows: Ewry man 
should reach perfect harmlessness toward all men in 
those activities which are rightly for purely personal 
needs. This is loving one's neighbor as oneself, "the 
love which worketh no harm" to another, the sum- 
mary of the second table of the Mosaic fundamental 
moral code. 

The law of perfect harmlessness to others in self- 
activities is expanded into the five prohibitions of the 
second table of Moses. 

I. Do no harm to another's life — "thou shalt 
not kill." The length of a himian life must not be 
suddenly terminated by another, for this is murder, 
and if done by design, it is first degree murder, even 
in state law. Nor may we cut life short a few years 
by imposing or faihng to remove such hard condi- 
tions as perilous labor without all possible safeguards, 

[3] 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

personal abuse, noxious and unsanitary environment, 
insufficient food or shelter. All such conditions are 
caused by greed in personal life, or by exceeding one's 
rights in acquisition. In time these kill men just 
as surely as prompter methods. 

Because of its very general form, the great com- 
mandment, ''Thou shalt not kill'' (it does not say 
exclusively, thou shalt not kill immediately or within 
a few hours), includes manifestly a prohibition of all 
shortening of life. The universal conscience now 
regards conditions producing disease — whether these 
are permitted by landlords in slum houses or by 
employers in unwholesome factories — as long-range 
instruments of murder. The cowards shoot from a 
safe place at a distance not yet covered by human 
law. But they must learn that life has other dimen- 
sions than length. To shorten hfe is seen to be 
murder, but to cripple its power to reach out is 
more cruel. Christian civiHzation is developing child 
labor laws and compulsory education to prevent the 
narrowing of the Hfe of children. The playground, 
of which city conditions robbed the child, is also 
being restored that his life may be more joyful, and 
that he may have the social culture which play only 
can give. Evening schools and lectures are provided 
for workingmen, that the lack of their childhood may 
be atoned for. 

What, then, about limiting the height of life? 
What about putting out eyes, not with red-hot irons, 
as the king of Babylon did to the Jews, but by strictly 

[4] 



LOVE TO MEN 

legal methods of modern civilization? What about 
tying the head fast to the knees so that all upward 
vision is lost? 

Then Christ sought out an artisan, 
A low-browed, stunted, haggard man, 
And a motherless girl, whose fingers thin, 
Pushed from her faintly want and sin, 
. . . "Lo, here," said he, 
"The images ye have made of me."^ 

Life has four dimensions — length, breadth, height, 
and the measureless inner Hfe with God. To empty 
the inner life of its joy and power by gross super- 
stition, and priestly oppression, — thus depriving 
human souls of their Saviour Brother — is the worst 
murder of all. 

Jesus goes so far as to say that even words of anger 
and cruel condemnation break the commandment 
concerning hfe.^ There are bitter words that cut 
and lacerate the heart more terribly than ever Roman 
scourge with nails tied in its whip tore the bared 
back and shoulders. And who will say they do not 
shorten Hfe just as much? 

Every principle of the gospel emphasizes height 
and breadth of Hfe rather than mere length. Length, 
indeed, is always to be sacrificed to height, height 
never to length. Surely, therefore, the law of harm- 
lessness to another's life while enjoying one's own 
appHes to the withholding of the gospel of salvation 
from the great wide world. Shall Christian people 

» Lowell, " A Parable." 2 See Matt. 5:22. 

[5] 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

monopolize the salvation of Christ, forming a trust 
against two thirds of mankind who have never yet 
heard of him? All other trusts are dwarfed into 
pettiness by this demoniac selfishness. What can 
be worse than the squandering in personal luxury 
of millions of treasure produced by gospel conditions 
and made secure to their possessors by gospel law, 
while the beginnings of this civilization are denied 
to the rest of humanity? 

The besetting sin of the life for self is neglect of 
others. If all men had full possession of their rights 
the simple duty would be not to encroach upon 
another's field — a negative duty of harmlessness. 
But we must love our neighbor as ourself by posi- 
tive effort to restore his long-defrauded rights in 
many things. To give him equal opportunity with 
the best favored, to claim for him every right we 
claim for ourselves, to begin "the struggle for the 
life of others" as soon as we struggle for our own, — 
this is loving our neighbor as ourselves. 

The sin of neglect is becoming a crime in law, 
which is ever extending in scope and definiteness. 
The Mosaic law is remarkable for its clear statement 
of the responsibility of a man for an unguarded house 
roof, a goring ox left to run at large, and other pure 
acts of neglect by which the neighbor is injured. 
Slowly, and against the stubborn resistance of great 
interests, human law is extending its shield over the 
places where the self-centering of men even unin- 
tentionally harms the other man. The Christian 

[6] 



LOVE TO MEN 

man will not wait until the law drives him to take 
precautions that no harm shall come, wittingly 
or unwittingly, from him to his neighbor. Abra- 
ham Lincoln would not take advantage of *'law 
honesty.'' 

The same general considerations hold for the 
seventh and the eighth commandments, which en- 
join such use of our person and property for personal 
ends as will work no harm to the person and property 
of all others. It is wrong to use my property so as 
to destroy or impair in value that of my neighbor. 
Whatever advantage I get from such use is taken 
from him to the extent that it depreciates his estate. 
I give him no return for what I take. 

My neighbor's good name is guarded by another 
commandment. It is wrong to injure his reputation 
or influence by any false impression I may make 
upon others while seeking to promote my own 
reputation. Telling the truth unnecessarily about 
a man's past life may be false witness because of 
his good present Hfe. There are no Httle things in 
defamation; it is the exposure of petty foibles and 
failings which brings a man into contempt and causes 
a serious diminution of his personal influence. The 
great French preacher, Massilon,^ says: "The first 
pretext which authorizes the defamation and censure 
of our brethren is the pretended insignificance of the 
vices we expose to view. We do not tarnish the 
man of character by denouncing his or the woman's 
^ Sermon on " A Malignant Tongue." 
[7] 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

conduct as criminal, but by turning upon a thousand 
faults which show them capable of the rest; inspire 
a thousand suspicions pointing to what we dare not 
say; satirical remarks which discover a mystery; 
poisonous interpretations to ridicule, yet protesting 
the persons are incapable of cunning and deceit.'^ 
There are many ways of being false witness besides 
the use of words in conventional form — a curl of 
the lip, an averted eye, a significant insinuation by 
gesture, a suggestion that things are not all right. 
The Apostle James ^ gives a powerful commentary 
on the ninth commandment: "The tongue is a fire: 
the world of iniquity among our members is the 
tongue, which defileth the whole body, and setteth 
on fire the wheel of nature, and is set on fire of hell. 
. . . The tongue can no man tame; it is a restless 
evil, it is full of deadly poison." (American Revision.) 
Defamation is a deadly poison that goes deeper 
than the physical life, for it destroys the most pre- 
cious possession a man can acquire, — his personal 
influence. 

" Who steals my purse steals trash; 'tis something, nothing; 
'Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands; 
But he that filches from me my good name 
Robs me of that which not enriches him 
And makes me poor indeed. " 

This law of perfect harmlessness to my neighbor, 
while developing self, extends even to my desires. 
I may not, without sin, covet or desire to deprive 
him of his possessions of any kind. Such coveting 

^ James, ch. 3. 
[81 



LOVE TO MEN 

is immensely harmful to myself and may be forbid- 
den for that reason. But it is harmful to the neigh- 
bor, for, if the covetous desire exists, it will inevitably 
express itself in many ways to his discomfort and 
loss, even without going to the length of steaHng 
what it covets. 

All these commandments have to do with our 
harmlessness to others. Now, what is our duty 
when the other man does harm to us in his self- 
activities? Christ's teaching in the Sermon on the 
Mount deals with this also. Moses taught retribu- 
tion in kind, "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, 
a life for a Hfe," but Jesus changes this conmiand also 
to love. His law of neighbor love requires that we 
suffer the harm done to us personally and permit, 
or even offer to permit, more harm. "If any man 
take away thy cloak, let him have thy coat also"; 
"if any man smite thee on one cheek, turn to him 
the other cheek''; "if any man compel thee to go a 
mile, go with him twain." This is the best way, the 
most practical way to end the injurious activity. 
It is the short cut to making a friend of an enemy. 
The poHcy of non-resistance to personal injuries when 
consistently appHed works perfectly. It worked even 
in the dealings of the Friends with the savage Ameri- 
can Indians. It worked in Russia against the cruel 
despotism of the Czar as Count Tolstoi exercised it. 
More desperate cases than these do not exist. 

This suffering all injuries in personal life is only 
"loving my neighbor as myself." Does he come to 

[9] 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

me in a raging passion or in desperate meanness and 
greed? If I love him as I love myself, I will seek 
to protect him also against himself. I will see that 
to retaliate would do greater harm to me and to 
himself; that I can minimize the injury to myself 
by non-resistance, and so most surely destroy his 
power to injure himself morally and spiritually as 
he does really injure himself more than he can injure 
me. Any wrong done to another doubles in results of 
wrong in the doer. So I will let him double the wrong 
to me in the assurance that it will then cease to both. 

A missionary in Africa was advised not to preach 
this doctrine at first to the thieving natives. But 
he did; and lo! just as his friend declared, the 
exultant natives began to steal. With sublime faith 
he gave them in each case something additional until 
his cottage was bare of the last portable article. 
Then the thieves gathered and he preached the same 
love with no resentment. But what a transformation ! 
One after another the looters shamefacedly returned 
the goods and brought also rice and game and fruit. 

More time for personal culture is given the self- 
isolated life as Christian civilization advances. The 
hours of labor are shortening, but all too slowly; the 
libraries are multiplying, the instinct for meditation 
is asserting itself. The best manhood demands more 
time to grow. The old monk of the Middle Ages 
made piety an end in itself — the chief thing in the 
Christian life; his piety was to be fondled and 
nursed and put on exhibition in a glass. He went 

[10] 



LOVE TO MEN 

apart to become good, but it was simply being good 
for nothing in particular — a goodness which quickly 
spoils in many cases and becomes vilest hypocrisy, 
vice, and crime. Like this is the Sunday piety of 
Protestantism which does not hitch to Monday's 
business and week-day society. This gives us the 
immoral reHgious man who is in all our churches. 
The true Christian, however, wants self-cultivating 
time to become good for larger service for mankind. 
He wants to be like Christ, who gave thirty years in 
silence out of thirty-three to this isolation for greatest 
personal power, who spent forty days with God after 
that, and whole nights on the moimtains in prayer. 
As Prof. William James says^: "Keep the faculty of 
effort ahve by a Httle gratuitous exercise every day. 
Be systematically ascetic or heroic in little unneces- 
sary points. Asceticism of this sort is like the insur- 
ance a man pays on his house or goods. The tax 
does him no good at the time and possibly never. 
But if the fire does come his having paid will be his 
salvation. So with the man who has daily insured 
himself to habits of concentrated attention, ener- 
getic voHtion, self-denial in unnecessary things. He 
will stand like a tower when everything rocks around 
and softer fellow mortals go like chaff." 

In his commemoration ode on the Cambridge anni- 
versary, Lowell thus describes Washington: 

The discipline that wrought through hfe-long throes, 
That energetic passion of repose, 

^William James, "Psychology," Vol. I, p. 126. 
[Ill 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

High poised example of great duties done, 
Broad-minded, higher-souled, there is but one, 
Who was all this, and ours, and all men's, WASHINGTON! 
The unexpressive man whose life expressed so much. 

In the purely personal life, then, there is but one 
relation between man and man — that of brotherly 
love which does no harm to another. The orbits of 
all good lives will not cross each other in collision. 
Even a magnificent cometlike character such as 
Washington or Lincoln finds his own path and does 
not need to shatter, as old tyrant conquerors did, the 
lives of thousands in humbler planes. The law of 
this self-development as related to others, ''Thou 
shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," is not the highest 
law of love, as many so often regard it, but the lowest 
of Christ's three laws of love, far though it be from 
actual realization in the world. It is based on the 
standard of personal rights claimed for himself and 
demands consideration in the same measure for all 
other men. It holds the scales in perfect balance 
of rights and duties, ''no rights without duties, no 
duties without rights." 

This was the law, first of prohibitions, then of 
love, for primitive times and conditions. Self and 
the neighbor, the next farmer, were all the little 
world of men then contained. Activities of inde- 
pendent self, and for self and that extended self, the 
immediate family, included about everything in life. 
The man himself cultivated on his farm all the food 
he ate; he constructed his own hut to live in; he or 

[12] 



LOVE TO MEN 

his wife spun the fabric or sewed the skins of beasts 
for their clothing; he was the only teacher his chil- 
dren had, his own physician, and even his own 
priest. In Palestine there was the minimum of buy- 
ing and selling, and no factories or large workshops. 
Indeed, when Moses gave the law, and for forty years 
thereafter, the chief occupation of the people was 
the daily gathering of manna and of occasional quail 
and other game, a wholly independent life for each 
man and his family. The law for such simple and 
primitive conditions was properly, "Do no harm." 
Later it assumed the positive expression, "Love thy 
neighbor as thyself." ^ 

In Christ's time Kfe still was extremely simple, 
but such commercial development as was coming 
required a larger love, the love of the Golden Rule. 
And the life beyond required still more love. Yet 
still, as we have seen, there is a self-independent 
life and always will be in its proper fundamental 
sphere. For this life Christ reenacted the old law 
of harmlessness to another in the spirit of love and 
added the duty of forgiveness of injuries and non- 
resistance to wrongs in this personal realm. This 
law of love will always have its place, for the isolated 
life for greater personal power in service is first in 
the new social interpretation of the gospel of Christ. 
It is in no sense an individualistic Christianity, but 
Christ's own perfect example of the way to prepare 
to go about doing most good. 

* Lev. 19 : 18. 

[13] 



II 

BUSINESS BY THE GOLDEN RULE — THE 
SECOND LAW OF LOVE 

THE second section of the conscientious life 
has to do with business relations. Think 
now of the vast and complicated network of 
daily occupations — agriculture, mining, manufac- 
ture, transportation, merchandise, the care of house- 
holds and of great hotels; think of the teacher, the 
physician, the lawyer, the journalist, the artist, 
the musician, the pastor, the statesman. In their 
daily toil each man may make his best contribution, 
according to his calling and ability, to the needs of 
mankind. Instead of each man doing practically 
everything for himself, as he did in the time of Moses, 
thousands of people serve each man and he serves 
thousands. To the Christian man his business or 
profession is his call from God, and he seeks God's 
guidance daily in his work and God's blessing upon 
it. The standard of true greatness which Christ 
proclaimed is practically the world's to-day, — the 
man who is servant of the largest munber is the 
greatest among men, and he who is servant of all 
men is the greatest of all time. That is to say, the 

[14 1 



LAW OF LOVE TO MEN 

man whose work or invention or helpful movement 
reaches the largest popular need is greatest. 

The fundamental law for making business life 
Christian is the Golden Rule, which may be defined 
as strict justice and veracity in the spirit of love in all 
transactions between man and man. 

Let us analyze the Golden Rule in the light of what 
is best for business protection and development. It 
is the law of ethical justice in business transactions. 
It is not good to be generous in business dealings, but 
to be simply and exactly just. Take the common 
instance of selling and buying a pound of sugar for 
five cents. If that is the right price, there should be 
no more sugar than precisely a pound and no more 
money than fiYt cents. More sugar for iivt cents 
is demoralizing to the best development of honest 
business, more money either exacted or voluntarily 
given is equally unwise. 

This business transaction in sugar and all like 
transactions must be regarded as part of a system of 
human living. It is not a soHtary and unrelated act 
in which generosity on one side and Hberahty on the 
other in Christian love might have play. The system, 
in the words of Henry George, "is like a highly 
organized animal extremely sensitive in every part. 
Shocks and jars from which a primitive community 
easily recovers would, to a highly organized com- 
munity, mean wreck." This system requires equal 
and exact justice which will develop accuracy in 
business; ability in management; it will stimulate 

[15 1 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

the product to its perfecting; it will give opportuni- 
ties to neighbors in the same business to prosper, 
and it will promote manly self-effort and good 
character. 

Any deviation toward generosity from strict equity 
in business is detrimental. It pauperizes the re- 
cipient and harms the giver ^s finer character. It 
lowers the self-respect and self-reHance of the man 
who receives more than his due and may cause him 
to relax strenuous endeavor to succeed; thus doing 
him serious damage in the end. Generosity and 
looseness in business dealings is a kindness which 
kills. It is giving which is blessed neither to the 
giver nor to the receiver. 

Justice includes honesty and veracity. Henry 
Clay Trumbull ^ has conclusively answered in the 
negative the question, "Is a lie ever justifiable? '^ 
There must be unswerving veracity in everything 
said to the man with whom we are dealing, yet we 
are under no moral obligation to tell men everything 
about any matter, nor anything at all about many 
matters. It would be contradictory to argue that it 
is our duty to tell men truths which concern only 
our personal rights or which concern others than the 
man in question. It is only when the man is so con- 
cerned that harm will come to him if he does not 
know the things we might tell him that it becomes 
our duty to inform him. 

Christian veracity requires that when we do tell 
1 See Trumbull's "Is a Lie Ever Justifiable?" 
[16] 



LAW OF LOVE TO MEN 

anything, in justice to a man, it shall be the truth 
as in a court of justice, — the truth, the whole 
truth, and nothing but the truth. For all our life is 
in God's court. It is never right to lie to a sane man. 
A He saves from one immediate trouble, but it brings 
seven other troubles worse than the first. We may 
decline, on grounds of justice and the rights of persons 
involved, to say anything, but we may not as true 
Christians speak what is false. 

The desire to do justice should become a passion. 
Mackenzie^ translates Matt. 5:6 thus: ^'Blessed are 
they which do hunger and thirst for justice." Even 
Matthew Arnold's idea of religion is ^'morahty touched 
with emotion." The Christian man in business 
will hold his honesty and veracity, not as merely 
negative virtues, but they will be fired with aggres- 
siveness and courage. To be honest and to succeed 
often requires that one expose the dishonesty of others 
and heroically fight a bad system. The platform of 
the International Workingmen's Association which 
was adopted at Geneva in 1866 is a good one to 
stand upon — "Truth, justice, and morality as the 
basis of conduct toward each other and toward all 
men; the duty of a man to claim the rights of a man 
and a citizen, not only for himself, but for every 
man who does his duty; no rights without duties, 
no duties without rights." ^ 

The wise Creator has endowed men with aptitudes 

^Mackenzie, "Ethics," p. 174. 

^ It is interesting to know that Karl Marx wrote this. 
[17 1 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

for different pursuits, abilities, and tastes so varied 
that all the vast range of human occupations, bene- 
ficial to man, can be kept filled, and filled by men 
who heartily choose an occupation and are enthusi- 
astic in its prosecution. And all callings that are 
honest and helpful are as truly Christian work as 
are prayer, praise, and offerings made as a part of 
worship. The rending of the veil of the temple at 
Jerusalem that had for ages made one little place 
pecuHarly holy — the Holy of hoHes — tore down 
forever the distinction between the secular and the 
sacred in work. This did not make worship secular, 
but it made work also sacred. The torn veil of the 
temple does not abolish the Holy of holies, but it 
extends it over the whole earth. 

A business obligation, therefore, is sacred. It is 
the divine assignment to serve some pressing need of 
our fellowmen. The fabled archangel who was sent 
down to sweep the street crossing did it thoroughly 
and helped the old lady across tenderly while his 
fellow archangel ruled an empire. But what mattered 
it to them which work they did? It was all for the 
King of kings, to whom the least service is holy and 
glorious and acceptable. It was all doing God's 
will. Let us ask with Henry Drummond: "Are 
we doing God's will? Not, are we doing God's work 
— preaching, teaching, or collecting money — but 
God's will? A man may think he is doing God's 
work when he is not even doing God's will." Every 
man should be held to the doing of his full part and 

[18 1 



LAW OF LOVE TO MEN 

be rewarded in full. The law of strict equity is the 
law of Christian love in business. 

Christ's statement of the second stage of Christian 
love is the Golden Rule. Let us get the Golden Rule 
exactly, for it contains more than has yet been 
popularly known. This is the way it is given in 
Matt. 7:12 (American Revision): ''All things there- 
fore whatsoever ye would that men should do unto 
you, even so do ye also unto them: for this is the 
law and the prophets." Luke 6:31 has it: ''And 
as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also 
to them likewise." This is more than "love thy 
neighbor as thyself," which requires that you put 
your neighbor into your place in your thought and 
regard him as carefully as you regard yourself, giving 
him the same rights and privileges you demand 
for yourself. The Golden Rule requires you to put 
yourself into his place and therefore study his actual 
condition and needs, and, knowing also your own 
side, do justice to his from the viewpoint of both 
sides. The first law of love deals out the same to 
him as you are taking yourself; the other attempts 
to deal out exactly what is just to that neighbor 
whose condition is probably so different from yours. 
The Golden Rule is love which puts yourself fully 
into the other man's place in addition to trying to 
think of him as entitled to the same that you have. 

It was not a small matter that Jesus added — that 
the Golden Rule fulfills not only all the law, but all 
the prophets. The prophets of the Old Testament 

[19 1 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

were the ethical philosophers of Judah and Israel. 
Their burning messages are being revived for our 
day and applied to twentieth century conditions with 
great force. There is something deeply significant in 
the recent widespread interest in all the Old Testa- 
ment seers as ethical teachers. It is universally felt 
that they are no less really spokesmen for God to 
America and the world to-day. 

In what did the prophets advance ethically beyond 
the law of Moses? By just so much is the Golden 
Rule an advance upon "Love thy neighbor as thy- 
self." Moses had two tables of the law; the one 
told of duties to God, the other of duties to man. 
In form all but two of the ten commandments were 
negative. They were prohibitions, except the fourth 
and fifth. Early in the moral growth of the people 
it was found that the positive form of love was 
necessary; so loving God with all the mind, heart, and 
strength was given as the convenient summary of 
the commandments concerning duties to God. The 
commandments toward men, however, were not so 
summarized. It was prophetism which greatly ex- 
tended the ethical field and intensified the ethical 
impulse. In one familiar summary ^ we have this 
result: "What doth the Lord require of thee, but to 
do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly 
with thy God?'' The American Revision makes a 
change of much interest, "What doth Jehovah re- 
quire of thee, but to do justly, and to love kindness, 

1 Micah 6 : 8. 
[20] 



LAW OP LOVE TO MEN 

and to walk humbly with thy God?'' The ''mercy" 
is not a forgiveness of enemies, but a "kindness'' 
toward all men. 

So, in a word, the Golden Rule makes the addition 
of sympathy to the justice which the law required; 
or, shall we say, it requires justice in the beautiful 
spirit of sympathy, the feeling with men which may 
come from putting ourselves in their place when we 
deal with them. This is the advance it makes over 
"Love thy neighbor as thyself," and this advance 
the prophets were to accompHsh, so that the Golden 
Rule now fulfills the law and also the prophets. 

How, then, will the law operate in concrete cases? 
Let us see. The merchant sells his neighbor an 
article of clothing. The merchant — if he is capable 
— knows the quality of the goods, he knows what a 
fair price for it is, and he knows that his purchaser in 
this case — and usually — is ignorant of both quality 
and fair price. The Golden Rule in thought puts 
the merchant into the place of the customer, but 
with the merchant's knowledge, and says to him, 
"If you, the merchant, knowing what you do of this 
article, were now buying it, how would you want 
to be treated?" Could anything be conceived more 
exactly just, practical, and easily appHed? 

An employer is fixing wages for his workman. 
The Golden Rule in business says to the employer, 
"If you were now in the workman's place and knew 
all you know about the profits of manufacturing and 
costs, what would you want the employer to pay you 

[21] 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

in wages?" In other words, looking at both sides, 
with the manufacturer's knowledge and the working- 
man's conditions, what is it right to allow? 

This is more than a man dealing with another in 
love as he loves himself, and more even than putting 
himself into the other man's place. It is putting 
himself into both places in the transaction so as to 
secure a complete ethical view, then to accord exactly 
what is just. The good workingman on his part lives 
by the Golden Rule when he puts himself into the 
employer's place, measuring so far as he can his 
perplexities, losses, risk, and capital invested, and 
knowing how much honest work and unusually good 
work will help swell the profits and reHeve the bur- 
dens, and when he hears the mandate of the Golden 
Rule, ''If you were now the employer what would 
you like the workman to do? How would you like 
him to use material, tools, and time?" And the good 
workingman is shown when he lives up to the self- 
evident answer he would have to give. Ruskin says 
impatiently, ''When will all workingmen strive to 
do full honest work with the same zeal with which 
they ask fair wages?" The easy answer is, "When 
they live by the Golden Rule." 

In professional service, take the teacher in daily 
work with pupils. The Golden Rule puts the teacher 
into the pupil's place, but with the teacher's expe- 
rience and knowledge of what earnest study means 
and how mental acquisition and ability are attained. 
The teacher, therefore, doing his duty will stimulate 

[22] 



LAW OF LOVE TO MEN 

to largest self-effort and give just such assistance and 
at such times as will most fully develop the pupil's 
own activity. The physician will treat the patient 
as he would have the doctor treat him when he is sick, 
knowing medical practice as he then would know it. 

In none of these cases — in no case in business — 
is the simple demand of the other man the measure 
of Christian duty. He, not knowing what the manu- 
facturer, merchant, or professional man knows, may 
ask too little in equity. It is the other man's duty 
to give him more than he asks, up to the measure 
of what is just. Or the customer, workman, or 
patient may demand or expect what is beyond his 
rights in justice. There is no Christian duty laid 
down in the Golden Rule of love in business requiring 
the Christian to grant such demands. 

The author does not contend that the Golden Rule 
has no application except in business. It is a good 
rule or law for all of Hfe, but for the Hfe beyond 
business there is a better law of love, as will be shown 
in the next chapter. Here the plea is made for the 
Golden Rule as being exactly the law of practical 
justice in all business, and no conscience should 
become morbid or feel condemned for not granting 
in business more than is just. It would be a wrong 
in the end, as we have seen, to the man receiving 
more regularly, however grateful he may now be for 
the generosity. Of course there is a place to be 
generous to the needy, to give, to lend money, and 
to help substantially, but such actions would better 

[23] 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

be distinct always from any business transaction 
between the parties. 

The Golden Rule is opposed to the rule of gold, 
greed for gold above honesty and veracity. 

Gold, yellow, glittering, precious gold — 
Will make black, white; foul, fair; 
Wrong, right; base, noble; old, young; 

Coward, valiant; 
This yellow slave will knit and break religion, 
Bless the accursed.^ 

"Knighthood in the twelfth century was for God 
and the ladies, but no knighthood in labor nor 
toward labor." ^ 

The Golden Rule is equally opposed to easy-going 
favoritism. Take again the merchant and his cus- 
tomer for clothing and suppose the merchant sells the 
article far below cost or even at cost. He cannot do 
that to every purchaser and continue in business. 
Thus his act is a piece of favoritism which, if done 
to several persons, must necessarily be distributed 
in increased cost to the rest of his customers. He 
is taking from them to hand over to the insistent 
clamorers for special privilege, — robbing many 
Peters to pay a few Pauls. The employer who pays 
large wages to a few favorites is equally guilty, 
for to do this he shaves the wages of the rest. 
Anyone who is familiar with actual conditions in 
the business world grants that it is difficult to adjust 

^Shakspere, "Timon of Athens." 

2 Crafts, "Practical Christian Sociology," p. 370. 



LAW OF LOVE TO MEN 

wages equitably, but many wrongs might be righted 
and should be righted at once. It is always neces- 
sary first to see what is right and then steer that 
way. 

The perplexing question of what is a fair price or 
what is a just wage is not settled conscientiously 
when we adopt current prices or wages. Prices may 
be too low and wages too high, or, what is more 
likely, prices may be too high and wages too low; 
for both current prices and current wages are fixed by 
the thoroughly unscrupulous, and competition finds 
it easiest to follow such a lead. In these days of 
actual combinations, or at least understanding be- 
tween the parties, prices are too high in most cases. 
In the recent times of unscrupulous competition, 
when prices were cut by dishonest adulterations, 
false labels, and short weights and measures, the 
Christian merchant refused to follow the lead, but 
frankly exposed such frauds and always gave the 
square deal himself. He was able to defend his 
higher prices as fair and just. It is an inspiring 
omen of better days that many such business men, 
sustained by an enlightened public, are succeeding. 
Such men are a refreshing contrast to others whose 
success is tainted with dishonor. There is too much 
truth in the words of R. F. Horton, ''What is called 
success in business, in literature, in society, in politics 
and public Hfe, and horrible as it is to say it, what is 
called success in the church and in religious work, is 
sometimes purchased by a subtle and sinister com- 

[25 1 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

promise with evil as definite as the compact by which 
a medieval witch purchased the power of the moment 
by the sale of her immortal soul." ^ 

Manhood maintained and perfected in business is 
richer than money made, and manhood wants nothing 
but justice in daily business or toil. It scorns gener- 
osity. As Sismondi says, "What! is wealth then 
everything? Are men absolutely nothing?" 

Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, 
Where wealth accumulates and men decay.* 

Rather be 

King by mere manhood now allowing aught 
Of holier unction than the sweat of toil.^ 

The best work of Sir Humphrey Davy, he loved to 
assert, was not the invention of the safety lamp for 
the miner, but the discovery of Michael Faraday for 
the world of science. 

Business life in Christian ethics has two main 
relations between the parties concerned to which the 
Golden Rule applies: 

I. In business a man may be the seeker of the 
service which another can give him, as when a pur- 
chaser seeks goods from a merchant, an employer 
seeks labor from a workman, a sick man healing from 
the physician, a student help in learning frora a 
teacher. The Golden Rule requires in each case that 
such pay should be given by the seeker as he would 

1 "Success and Failure." 

2 Goldsmith, "Deserted Village." 
^ Lowell. 



LAW OF LOVE TO MEN 

desire for himself if the positions were reversed — 
knowing also his own side and having love, with 
sympathy, for the other. 

2. On the other hand a man may offer service to 
others — something he manufactures, sells, transports, 
or can give professionally. The Golden Rule now 
requires him to furnish such goods or service as would 
satisfy him if he were the recipient — knowing also 
what he knows as giver. 

Subsidiary to these main relations, in the vast 
development of daily work, have sprung up other 
relations between men in the same business or pro- 
fession in the same community, employers with 
other employers prosecuting the same or interrelated 
business, workmen with fellow workmen, employers 
with their workmen in the factory, as they seek to 
fall in line with the great profits-sharing movements. 

What does Christian ethics declare about these 
relations? 

First, concerning employer and employees in the 
same factory. They stand together as partners in 
a common service to mankind. This is ethically 
the best of all unions, whether it leads to profits- 
sharing or not. It is a '' perpendicular'' division in 
the labor world which promotes best service, and not 
the '' horizontal" division of all employers united in 
one body above and all workmen of different factories 
united in one body below. The latter promoted 
caste feeling and class distinctions and antagonisms, 
which are obnoxious in America. 

[27 1 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

Some were made to starve and toil, 
Some to share the wine and oil, 

We are told, 
Devil's theories are these. 
Stifling hope and love and peace, 
Framed your hideous lusts to please.^ 

The employer and workmen together in one factory 
form a scientific solidarity in business which promotes 
best service, insures industrial development and peace 
and largest profits. So Le Claire, the French pioneer 
in profits-sharing, and many others have shown. 
There are good reasons for additional associations 
after this best one of all workmen in one business and 
all workmen in every business, and also for the union 
of all owners and employers. There are problems on 
each side, certain helpful development in efiiciency, 
a conservation of rights, and a general brotherliness 
possible in these associations. If actually these are 
not attained, that is reason for changing the forms 
and methods of the union or association, but not for 
abolishing them. 

Actual relations at present between men leading 
in any business or profession are one of three kinds : 

I. There is destructive or demoralizing competi- 
tion between these men. 

What shall be said from the Christian point of 
view about competition as now carried to extremes 
in the few businesses where competition yet has 
play? Such competition must be distinguished from 
that able and aggressive enterprise in business which 

1 Lowell, "Hunger and Cold." 
[28] 



LAW OF LOVE TO MEN 

seeks to render the ideal service at lowest prices. 
This enterprise is what the many competition- 
protecting statutes of our states and the National 
Congress fully expected to result. Results were for 
a while beneficial; when the prices were just or 
reasonable and business was honorably conducted 
competition was laudable. To be sure those who 
were giving inferior service were oppressed and some 
of them were driven out of business. But such 
things will come in consequence of superior service in 
any Hne of human activity. The best physician will 
after awhile take the practice of the incompetent man, 
the better teacher will get more and better students, 
and the more enterprising merchant will have the 
larger trade. There is no right way to save the 
idle and unfit in any forward march. So long as 
competition is an honorable struggle for more ex- 
cellent things to deal to fellowmen it is not only a 
mark of higher civilization, but it is just as much a 
mark of real Christianity. It will be best in the 
end even for the whole tribe of laggards themselves. 
The Golden Rule is fulfilled by the leader who causes 
these changes, for his methods have brought about 
for others exactly what he would desire to have done 
to him if he were lazy or unprogressive ; he would 
want the stirring of soul which real progress gives 
to the slower members. 

But, taking the country over, competition has 
failed to do the good expected of it, and it will evi- 
dently soon become a thing of the past. It became 

[29] 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

a cut-throat struggle, brutally selfish, unscrupulous, 
and unrelenting. It was planned rather to drive 
neighbors to the wall than to improve the service. 
It was against men, not for the good of all men. 
Where it still persists, it is a savage warfare no less 
cruel than scalping or cannibaHsm. Its usual motives 
and methods absolutely ignore the Golden Rule. 

It is unHkely that the man who starts to ruin his 
neighbor in business will continue honest and scrupu- 
lous in the quality of his goods and in his weights 
and measures. His temptations to dishonest things 
become fierce, and swindling methods are his effective 
weapons. If he has started to ruin one man, why 
should it be thought he will hesitate to rob others? 
What wonder if competitors, in many cases, resort to 
the same wickedness? So the general tone of business 
is lowered, and the consumer, who was supposed to 
be the favored man by the law of competition, now 
is most wronged. 

2. The oppressive combination or trust is now the 
usual evolution of every business in a few years. 
Fierce competition is practically abandoned in many 
lines because shrewd experience has shown that 
combinations are more profitable and more com- 
fortable. These trusts have become gigantic; they 
have, often, a complete monopoly of their products 
or'their service. They raise prices beyond all fairness 
and justice, so that they have rightfully been char- 
acterized by state and national laws as conspiracies 
against the pubUc welfare. The law of supply and 

[30 1 



LAW OF LOVE TO MEN 

demand is not operative to correct the oppression 
when the supply is all regulated by one combination 
and the demand represents an ever growing necessity. 

Christian ethics must regard all unjust prices as 
so much robbery of men, all the more reprehensible 
because the monopoly has rendered men helpless to 
resist. All individuals in the trust are personally 
responsible to God. The serviceable decision of Sir 
Edward Coke ''that corporations have no souls" 
is vicious. The men in the corporation have souls 
and, what is more to the purpose of justice, they 
have bodies, which the law is finding and visiting 
with punishment for these crimes of business. ''The 
man is the criminal in every case " is now the decision 
of a righteous judge. These oppressions are mon- 
strous when they deal with the necessities of the 
poorest poor. Even Robin Hood would not despoil 
the poor. 

3. Slowly there is evolving a genuine Christian 
cooperation. The groups of cooperative farmers in 
the south of Ireland under the noble leadership of 
Sir Horace Plunkett, the wonderfully successful 
groups in Denmark, in France, and now many in 
America, are the true brotherhood in business. 
They already cover production, marketing, banking, 
and mercantile enterprise. About forty farmers 
constitute a working group. One m_an is made 
purchaser of supplies for all; thus the troublesome 
middleman is eliminated. One man manages the 
marketing of all products, others manage the mer- 

[31] 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

chandising and banking in trusteeships for the 
group. This permits individual initiative, the largest 
use of special ability, and the power of combination 
without injustice or oppression. Moreover, it pro- 
motes the best motives and brotherly character of all. 
It is true Christianity up to the modern spirit using 
the latest great opportunities of civilization. It is 
better from the standpoint of character development 
and individual power and satisfaction to conscience 
than state socialism, which in the countries named 
it is rapidly displacing in the popular mind. It is 
better than individual competition because it seeks 
the prosperity of all by aU, and is most successful 
when all are doing well. It is the most significant 
social movement of the times in the industries. ^ 
While thus far applied chiefly to farming communities 
it is plainly just as practicable for towns and even 
cities, to which it is surely working its way. 

Professional life — in medicine, law, teaching, 
journalism, in the ministry, and in statecraft — 
has its well-defined ethics. The physician must not 
advertise nor trench upon his fellow practitioner in 
unguarded utterances reflecting upon him. He must 
treat the poorest poor with the same devotion as the 
millionaire patient. So the code continues. There 
is a peculiarly delicate relation between physician and 
physician which should be conscientiously preserved, 
but the duty to the patient and to the patient class 
surely is paramount. The physician lives to serve 
^ John Graham Brooks, "Lectures at Chautauqua," N. Y., 1909. 
[32] 



LAW OF LOVE TO MEN 

the patient, not to defend the bad work of a fellow 
practitioner, except within certain limits, as when 
there is possibihty of error made in good faith or 
because of present imperfect knowledge, for then 
the standing and esprit de corps of the profession are 
involved. 

No class of professional men — not even the min- 
ister of the gospel — has such a high and self-denying 
spirit as the doctor of medicine. The great work 
physicians have done in preventive measures, in 
thorough sanitation, in the stamping out of epidemics 
and contagious diseases, and in popular teaching of 
more healthful living, has already seriously cut into 
the income of many physicians. Yet the physicians 
themselves are leading in all that means reduced 
amount of sickness, to their own pecuniary loss. 
The skillfully drawn portrait of Doctor MacLure in 
"The Bonnie Brier Bush" captured the heart of the 
world for physicians in general. All honor to the 
unworldly men, and God's blessing upon their efforts 
to banish all diseases and causes of disease. 

But what shall be thought of a combination of 
physicians for absolute mutual protection against 
legal suits for malpractice? Doubtless the physician 
is'pecuHarly liable to blackmail, and attendance at 
court, win or lose, is extremely costly to him, as the 
blackmailer knows only too well. But surely, if 
the trust of physicians makes itself responsible for 
the unqualified legal defense of every kind of prac- 
titioner and renders difficult if not impossible the 

[33 1 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

securing of necessary medical testimony to a wrong 
done, in every case it should make a full investiga- 
tion of its own and make some adjustment of the just 
claims of a man seriously injured by reckless mal- 
practice. Instead of this, the first effect of the legal 
medical trust is to make reckless in experimentation 
a certain characterless class of surgeons, and then, 
when these do lifelong harm, the combination puts 
the entire burden upon the unfortunate patient. 
Fortunately this class of surgeons is small, but the 
cases are numerous enough to demand that the con- 
scientious doctor be protected against them. 

On the other hand, probably no class of professional 
men suffer more from the repudiation of their just 
claims than the physicians. Surely, if any bill is to 
be paid first, it should be the bill of the man who 
stood between us or our loved ones and disease or 
death, often at great personal risk and always obHvious 
of his comfort and expense. Here the Golden Rule 
comes in. 

The Christian minister has a business relation to 
his church. He is in duty bound to give definite 
service for his salary. He has no overseer in the 
employment of his time, there is usually no specifica- 
tion of duties in his week-day work, and if he is easy 
of conscience about it, he can do a minimum of actual 
work for a long time before his day of retribution 
dawns. He is peculiarly tempted to moral and intel- 
lectual sloth, and he ought to be held to full returns 
for his pay as all other men are. 

[34] 



LAW OF LOVE TO MEN 

The relation of lawyer to client is more complex. 
The attorney-at-law is also an officer of the court 
of justice, duly sworn to uphold the law. He must 
be faithful in advocating the cause of his client, 
but there can be no obligation to tell falsehoods nor 
to attempt to frustrate justice. Christian lawyers, 
like the great Abraham Lincoln, may be true to the 
highest moral ideals, either as counselors to business 
men or as advocates in criminal defense. When they 
take the defense of an accused man, even one whom 
they know to be guilty, they should secure for him 
every legal right, but never more than this. "Ideal, 
indeed! but impracticable!" says some lawyer who 
has a large criminal court practice or is counsel for 
an iniquitous trust, whose unscrupulous lying and 
jury influencing has turned loose upon the community 
gangs of thieves and murderers. And this lawyer, 
like a certain notorious lawyer in a large city, "of 
whose health every scoundrel first inquired before 
he began his crimes," is justly regarded the most 
serious menace to life and property in his city. For- 
tunately a few only of such criminal lawyers can 
make large fees, for many criminals are poor, and the 
rich corporations of criminal character employ only 
the political lawyers. 

Who can measure the responsibihty of the journal- 
ist or author in these days? The circulation of daily 
newspapers, of the monthlies and great weeklies, 
and of the book that wins popularity is enormous. 
How great the opportunity here. The writer must 

[35] 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

consider his relation to his reader and to the man 
and measures of the day. His readers look to him 
for sincere, unbiased statements of fact and truth. 
They want able and helpful editorial discussions. 
It is no defense to say that because the reader of the 
newspaper pays only one cent, and of the magazine 
only ten cents, while the cost is much greater, there- 
fore he has no right to demand full consideration in 
all discussions. Readers who pay the subscription 
price make possible the advertising revenue which 
brings rich profits. The business obligation to render 
just service is upon editors and authors no less than 
upon day laborers. The service rendered may be 
intangible, but real and clearly defined in general 
conscience. The newspaper, the magazine, and the 
book of every kind are under the Golden Rule, the 
law of Christian love which enjoins justice with 
sympathy. 



[36] 



Ill 

THE LAW OF LOVE FOR THE LARGER 
CHRISTIAN LIFE 

CHRISTIAN civilization is yet only a "thin 
veneer over barbarism ' ' and animalism . There 
is distressing proof of the thinness of this 
veneer in the fact that the life of self-support and 
personal acquisition, which we first considered as 
the foundation of individual power, added to the 
business life which is necessary for the orderly supply 
of man's immediate needs, are regarded so generally 
as the largest part of Hfe. Many, indeed, regard 
these things as the whole of Hfe. But in Christ's 
thought they are only the foundations of the splendid 
temple which every man is to erect. 

Self-conservation builds the magnificent steamship 
of human nature in keel and prow, in decks and 
saloons, staterooms, quarterdeck and wheelhouse, in 
engines and screws and luxurious accommodations. 
The business life stocks the coal bunkers, the steward's 
larders, and the life-saving appliances. But to the 
great liner there is now the vast ocean of life before 
it, there are the living passengers crowding the dock 
to occupy her cabins and staterooms, and there is the 

[37] 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

great cargo to be carried. What was the great ship 
constructed for? What is her Hfe purpose? 

Now after full self-development and business life is 
real life to begin. The steamer is at the dock, steam 
is up, whither will she sail, and with what cargo and 
passengers? 

True Christian life of Christlike proportions is 
lived after the day's work ends. It is lived on 
Sundays, on holidays, festal days, and during other 
intermissions from hard toil. When right conditions 
at last prevail in the labor and business world, prob- 
ably ^ve hours a day, with all men working at their 
best and all working steadily, will supply all the 
needs of mankind. The trend of the times has been 
to diminish the hours of toil and enlarge the evening, 
the time of larger hfe. Days for recreation and for 
higher pursuits are multiplying. "The long evening 
of civiHzation has come!" With the development 
of brilhant oil lamps, gas and electric light in homes 
and streets, the day is eighteen hours long. Thus, 
even now, a half day is given for the larger life. 
Soon the proportions between the hours of labor and 
the hours devoted to the larger life will be reversed, 
and the half day will be for self-support, and a whole 
day of ten hours out of twenty-four will be for keeping 
step with Christ in his kingdom's onward progress. 
What we do between the evening meal and midnight 
is what will count hereafter. No one, not even on 
the farm, now goes to bed at candleHght. The 
candle itself is a curious relic. 

[38] 



LOVE FOR CHRISTIAN LIFE 

It must be emphasised, of course, that Christ's 
thought of life includes daily toil as Christian service, 
and that opportunities for character perfecting 
abound in the world of labor and professional hfe; 
that while, in the daily work itself, strict ethical 
justice is the wise Christian law, during the daily 
intercourse of man with man many opportunities 
for the Christly love of sacrifice appear. The true 
Christian can live his larger life all the time. Phillips 
Brooks says: ^'Let each day's commonest act be an 
act that has an aim and does it, and it shall make us 
wonder to see it dignified by that aim, and cured 
of aU its commonness. Every honest occupation is 
to be considered as the channel of utterance of the 
divine life in the character and soul." 

Heeding truth alone, and turning 

From the false and dim, 
Lamp of toil or altar burning 
Are alike to Him.^ 

Yet in fullest measure the larger life is lived after 
the daily toil. Then come the sweet relations of the 
home; the fellowships and activities of good society; 
the tender personal friendships like those of David 
and Jonathan, of Damon and Pythias, of Alfred 
Tennyson and Arthur Hallam; then attention can 
be given to the meetings, movements, and oppor- 
tunities of the church, the reforms and philanthropies 
of the age, the associated movements for research 
and learning, the missionary propaganda in all forms 

iWhittier, "The Lumberman." 
[39] 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

of Christendom to the world, the neighborhood 
development in all higher civilization. 

Workingmen whose hours of duty are irregular — 
like railroaders, street-car employees, policemen, 
firemen, watchmen — are rightly seeking to have 
adjustments made that will afford definite leisure 
time for home and beyond. The great movement of 
workingmen for a Sunday rest day started in Wis- 
consin some years ago, which has now spread all over 
America and is growing more insistent and strenuous 
in its demands, is a most promising sign of the times. 
It expresses the deeper love for home, the growing 
sense of responsibility for the children, and the desire 
for participation in the larger privileges of civilization. 
Christian civilization must second this demand for a 
universal weekly rest day and must adjust its activ- 
ities to it, at least in such a way as to make Sunday 
work a minimum of the strictest necessity. For 
society becomes self-destructive when its develop- 
ment takes the father from the family life. The 
boy, the future father and worker, needs the father's 
presence, sympathy, and companionship when he 
is between eight and fifteen years of age. Then is 
the time of awakening life and the reason for the be- 
ginnings of habit formation and marvelous acquisi- 
tion of knowledge. Of what avail is the support of 
the boy's physical life if his moral character is dwarfed 
and he becomes a criminal or a beast? A home 
atmosphere of refinement, happiness, moral keen- 
ness, and purity is to be created, home appliances 

[40] 



LOVE FOR CHRISTIAN LIFE 

for child-training must be provided, blessed home 
fellowships are to be formed, and the father is needed 
just as much as the mother. We have been impressed 
with the sadness of home without a mother, but 
our homes sorely suffer for being without fathers. 
Business must come first, men say; but business 
for what? For the very home which by business 
is robbed of its best. Business must be slavishly 
attended to, they insist; but what for? To provide 
for that home material luxuries at the cost of being 
fatherless. 

In this larger Christian life we reach the third law 
of love in Christian living, the law of Christly love, 
loving others as he loved us. Let us get it exactly. 
"A new commandment I give unto you, that ye 
love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also 
love one another."^ It is a distinctly new com- 
mandment, in that respect differing from ''Love thy 
neighbor as thyself," which was simply a well-known 
summary of the law, and differing from the Golden 
Rule which Jesus said summed up the law and the 
prophetic ethical development in addition. In state- 
ment the Golden Rule was new, a marvelous single 
sentence that contains all taught before Christ. In 
substance it was old, so Christ claims no originality 
for it. 

But for the law of love he now enjoins, he claims a 
place; it is the eleventh commandment, a real addi- 
tion to the law and the prophets. And his love, which 

1 John 13 : 34. 

[41] 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

is now set as the model for good people, was not only 
a fuller love, a greater love than had ever been 
known in the past; it was a new kind of love, which 
Paul said is immeasurable, whose height and depth 
and length and breadth pass knowledge. It was 
a love that made Christ, though infinitely rich in 
heaven beyond man's wildest imagination, ready to 
assume voluntary poverty, becoming poorer than the 
poorest. He chose to be a helpless baby in an oriental 
peasant woman's arms, who brought him into the 
world in a stable and laid him in a manger. For our 
sakes he came; not after the manner of incarnations 
in the ancient mythology, leaping a full-grown man 
into the world, but as a helpless baby, unable to 
speak or walk. Then the Hfe of poverty, obscu- 
rity, struggle, misunderstanding, rejection, loneliness 
unimaginable; of scorned love, of stupid people, of 
petty things that pierced worse than thorns, of selfish 
clashings; the life that repaid his benevolence with 
persecution, his wise teachings with ridicule, his heart- 
moving appeals with bitterness; the life that came 
amid the privations, narrowness, and slowness of the 
first century instead of choosing to come in America in 
the twentieth century; that began among the beasts 
of the stall and ended with thieves on the cross; 
descended with death into a grave; dying amid exe- 
crations of priests, howls of a frenzied populace, the 
shame of a public execution as a condemned criminal, 
the cruelty of heathen soldiers, the sobbings of a 
heart-broken mother and one lone disciple. 

[42] 



LOVE FOR CHRISTIAN LIFE 

What kind of love is this? Its innermost character 
and essence is a limitless sacrifice. The law of love 
for the larger Christian life is nothing less than a love 
which is wholly characterized by limitless sacrifice. 

Now for a moment let us recall the three laws of 
love. First there is the love prescribed by the law, 
^'Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself," a measured 
love by the scale of one's own rights and demands. 
This is the love that keeps the law which commands 
that we do no harm to another; the love for self- 
conservation of life which enjoins perfect harmless- 
ness to all others, putting them also into our place to 
be guarded as we guard ourselves. Second, there is 
the love indicated by the command, *' Whatsoever ye 
would that men should do unto you, do ye even so 
unto them likewise." This is also a measured love, 
but it calls for the putting of oneself into the other's 
place and studying his needs in full justice and 
veracity. This is the love that adds practical sym- 
pathy in our giving of justice to all men, that is just 
by a complete view of both sides in our dealings. 
The third and highest love is that which comes 
through sacrifice, limitless self-sacrifice. 

The love of Christ is to be the law for our life. 
That love is self-denying: it loves my neighbor more 
than myself. It is unmeasuring in its activities: it 
does more for others than it ever expects others to 
do unto itself. This Christly love is far beyond the 
sense of duty alone which Kant ^ philosophizes about 

1 Quoted by Dewey and Tufts, " Ethics," p. 349. 
[43] 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

as the only virtue, a duty usually unpleasant, but to 
be done in heroic spirit. Schiller keenly ridicules it 
in verse: 

Gladly serve I my friends but I do it, alas! with affection, 
Hence I've a gnawing suspicion that I am not virtuous. 

He imagines Kant saying: 

Help except this there is none, you must seek to despise them, 
And with horror perform whatever the law has commanded. 

But what if Kant's sense of duty has back of it, 
infilling it, the love of Christ? It will be no less 
duty, but even in sacrifice unto death it will be joy. 
For, as Drummond says, love is always joy and 
beauty and Hfe: 

Straight is the line of duty, 
Curved is the line of beauty. 

But draw the line of duty straight on round the world 
and it is the glorious curve of ideal moral beauty. 

Christly love is more than the Golden Rule, it is 
the rule of the Pearl of Great Price. The love of the 
family of God, of the great friendships of men beyond 
home or kinship. It is the love of the true Christian 
home which makes it heaven on earth; the love of 
kinship which has become the warmest friendship; 
and of friendship which has grown into soulful 
fellowship, and fellowship into a partnership in all 
good works, and partnerships into the solidarity of 
the kingdom of God extended into all human life. 
\ In this larger life the local Christian church, when 
it returns to consciousness as the real body of Christ 

[44] 



LOVE FOR CHRISTIAN LIFE 

and becomes vitalized in every member, will perform 
a large part. It is ridiculously undeveloped now 
when the average local church sets only one in ten 
of its people to any specified work; enlists only one 
in three in systematic giving; when only one in six 
is interested in Christ's world-wide kingdom, and 
not one in fifty is doing any personal work in winning 
men to Christ. Because of these facts the church is 
doing only a feeble kind of spiritual work, only a 
little social developing, very small intellectual stimu- 
lating, and is responsible for no scientific moral cul- 
ture. The children of this world are so much wiser 
than the children of light! 

The only way men of the world manage to get 
people in a factory to do their best work is to organize 
them until the last individual is set to the work best 
suited to his abihties. The only way armies win 
strenuous campaigns is by a wonderful organization 
which takes account of the last soldier and the last 
factor which bears on fighting efficiency. It is the 
way of all civilization, except the belated church, to 
plan a thorough organization, develop all resources, 
coordinate officers, supervise with care, and then 
move forward with power. How foolish, then, to 
depreciate organization in the church or to insist 
that the church is already over-organized! Those 
who make such statements would better rub their 
Rip Van Winkle eyes and do as Christ bids them — 
learn of the people outside who are doing things. 
The local church is in many cases rapidly disinte- 

[45 1 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

grating. At best it adds but a few converts from a 
teeming world of sinners. What is accomplished is 
due largely to the activity of the pastor or leader, 
for in many churches he is the chief if not the 
only real worker. 

If the good that Christ did is to be the model for 
his church, surely there is nothing helpful to man 
in any way, whether material, intellectual, moral, 
spiritual, esthetic, or social, which the church ought 
not to include in her programme of service. The 
church's work is not "to hold her own" simply, but 
to capture humanity and all its interests for Christ. 

The way to begin this is to possess the love of Christ. 
That will constrain Christians to become Hke Paul, 
who felt its power in his inmost soul; like Livingstone 
and the modern leaders in philanthropy, reform, 
missions, and evangelism; like the Salvation Army. 

Let us analyze the limitless sacrifice of this love 
more thoroughly. It is a sincere, warm love for 
man as man — the deepest love; a love that goes forth 
seeking all men; a love that regards a man, any 
man, with passionate desire to save him; a love 
that suffers for men, with men, from men, "suffereth 
long and is kind." 

Christ came from heaven and went into the depths 
of human life because he had this love. He describes 
it in the parables of the Shepherd, the Woman, the 
Prodigal's Father. He commands his disciples, in the 
strength of him who gives this love, to go into all the 
world and find every creature. 

f46l 



LOVE FOR CHRISTIAN LIFE 

Those who have this love, love men because they 
are men. So David Livingstone loved the wretched 
black man of Africa; John Howard loved the degraded 
criminal in the dungeon; Father Damien and Mary 
Reed loved the infectious leper; Florence Nightingale 
loved the roughest soldier; Charles Crittenden loved 
his fallen sisters; Jerry McAuley loved the drunken 
tramp; General Booth loved the crushed and stunted 
and degraded slum dweller. These all really loved as 
a mother loves her child, as Wendell Philhps, John 
Brown, and John G. Whittier loved the slave. 

Let Whittier speak ^ for them all: 

What, ho! our countrymen in chains! 

The whip on Woman's shrinking flesh! 
Our soil yet reddening with the stains, 

Caught from her scourging, warm and fresh! 
What! mothers from their children riven! 

What! God's own image bought and sold! 
Americans to market driven. 

And bartered as the brute for gold! 

A Christian! going, gone! 
Who bids for God's own image? — for his grace 
Which that poor victim of the market place 
Hath in her suffering won? 
My God! can such things be? 
Hast thou not said that whatsoe'er is done 
Unto thy weakest and thy hmnblest one, 
Is even done to thee? 

This is no academic altruism nor fine philosophic 
humanitarianism. It is the warm red heart's love 

1 Whittier, "Our Countrymen in Chains" and "The Christian 
Slave." 

[47] 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

that sweats drops of blood for its own, the "enthusi- 
asm for humanity" for its own sake, because it has 
the vision of love for it, seeing divine possibilities in 
the image yet divine, however sin-cursed and crushed 
into the beast or demonlike. 

Is this too lofty to be practical as a law of love? 
Nay; we have come to a day when the ideal is the most 
practical, when this very love of Christ is conquering 
the world. Nothing short of this kind of love has 
enthusiasm in it, or perseverance, or capacity for 
suffering in the fierce battles it invokes, or can be 
another of the martyrs, should need arise. 

Hurt as it may, love on, love forever; 

Love for love's sake, like the Father above, 
But for whose brave-hearted Son we had never 

Known the sweet hurt of the sorrowful love.* 

The love for God with all the mind, soul, and 
strength is the fountain for this neighbor love, for 
the love of the Golden Rule, and for the Christly love. 
These are the successive developments of love for 
God working out toward man. Its final form is the 
Christly love of the Hmitless sacrifice, for that is the 
love of God shown in Christ in its fullness. 

Love took up the harp of life, and smote on all the cords with 

might. 
Smote the cord of self, that trembling passed in music out of sight.' 

1 George MacDonald. ' Tennyson. 



[48] 



IV 

THE SCOPE AND LIMITATIONS OF 
CONSCIENCE 

THE perception of lightness or wrongness in 
an act, like the visual perception of color and 
form in an object, is a simple and elemental 
human sense. Like sight and hearing, the moral 
sense is probably, in final analysis, simply a matter 
of clear consciousness; but this is enough for sight 
and hearing, und may well be to any sincere man for 
conscience, as to its reality and validity. This inner 
power, called conscience, is the perceptive organ of 
the moral nature. It acts spontaneously when con- 
fronted by man's voluntary actions, words, feehngs, 
and motives, in the hght of what ethical standard it 
may have, just as physical sight sees and must use 
whatever is at hand — candle-, gas-, electric-, or lime- 
light — in seeing. 

Conscience settles finally on motives and purpose. 
The intention of the man in any act or word or feeling 
is the real objective of conscience and to that it in- 
stinctively seeks to penetrate. The motive or inten- 
tion is now universally recognized, even in state and 
national laws on crime and in judicial decisions, as 

[49 1 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

the moral character of an act. In crimes, however, 
the need of also regarding results has long caused 
confusion concerning motive. Through long ages we 
have finally come to clear up this confusion. For 
example, in the code of Hammurabi (the king Am- 
raphel of Genesis), dating before Abraham we have 
this curious law: "If a physician operate on a man 
with a bronze lancet for a severe wound and cause 
the man's death, or open an abscess and destroy the 
man's eye, they shall cut off his fingers." But long 
ages later, in early German and English law, the owner 
of a weapon left to be repaired at a smith's, was 
punished if the weapon was stolen and used to do 
harm.i Also, whole families were destroyed, women 
and children included, for the sins or crime of the 
father; indeed whole tribes were at times destroyed 
for an injury by one of their number. It is because 
of Hke confusion of thinking that the child retaliates 
for an injury wholly unintentional. 

Conscience (con-scio) is, literally, knowing with.^ 
There is then a twofold knowledge, — knowing an act 
and knowing its moral quahty according to a moral 
standard. This is the meaning also of the equivalent 
German term, Gewisse, and the old English, inwit. 
It is consciousness of the moral quality of an act 
and of the moral law. 

1 Dewey and Tufts, "Ethics," p. 105. 

2 Prof. Amos R. Wells says, "My conscience is that whereby 
I know with (scio-con) God. It warns, condemns, approves, 
comforts, cheers when God would. It is a representative of 
God." 

[50] 



LIMITATIONS OF CONSCIENCE 

**It is intention that gives character to an act. 
A and B both give to C a piece of money. A gives it 
with the intention of procuring the murder of a man; 
B to reHeve a family in distress. The act is the same, 
the intention gives its character as right or wrong." ^ 

Conscience is often confused with the entire moral 
nature. But there are several other factors in the 
moral nature of man. There is the will, the execu- 
tive of the soul; the impulses to good or evil from 
predispositions, weakness, or strength; moral habits 
already formed; the motives felt and adopted; the 
circumstances of the particular act; the measure of 
knowledge of the Christian law as the ideal good. 
Schliermacher names three ideas as all comprehen- 
sive in the moral Hf e : the good, meaning the standard 
for human moral actions; duty, the sense of obligation 
which includes conscience and more, and virtue, the 
subjective result in the person doing the good as his 
duty. All these factors and ideas are often con- 
founded under the name conscience, and it becomes 
of the highest practical importance, and not merely 
an academic question, to define the scope and limita- 
tions of conscience itself. Then we shall know what 
to expect of our own and other people's consciences; 
we shall know what factors morally to train, and 
how to train them, and thus make steady progress 
in good habits and good character. 

Let us examine, therefore, several popular defini- 
tions of conscience. 

1 Wayland, "Moral Science," p. 31. 
[51] 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

John Calvin's definition was said to be "Con- 
science is the sense of divine imperial justice." This 
is very impressive, but to what conscience is, it adds 
also the maturely educated moral nature, the large 
knowledge of Christian law, and also faith in the 
absolute righteousness of God. Then it confuses 
divine justice, which applies to God's acts alone, 
with righteousness, which is the standard for human 
actions. God only can have a true sense of his own 
justice. Indeed, to man's view, and even to con- 
science, it often appears as if God were not just, 
so that conscience is then really a sense of God's 
injustice. Of course Christian faith believes God 
is always good and wise and right; but this is faith, 
and we have no full perception of his justice such as 
a sense of it would give. The conscience of man, 
moreover, is the sense of human actions by their 
intentions, good or evil, judged by Christian law 
when known. 

Martin Luther's definition of conscience seems 
closer to its real nature and scope, but is still in 
need of careful examination. He says, "Conscience 
is the consciousness of duty," mixing several moral 
factors into one. The duty is what conscience sees, 
and it implies a moral law which is outside of the soul 
defining the duty, and an act which will comply 
with the law. Then come the motives or general 
purpose the man has in view in the action, and these 
motives or intentions are also recognized by conscience 
as good or evil. 

[52] 



LIMITATIONS OF CONSCIENCE 

In short, duty is the object which conscience sees 
and feels, just as truth is the object which the intellect 
sees and feels by its reasoning; beauty the object 
which the esthetic taste sees and feels; God the object 
which faith knows in the religious nature, and some 
friend the object which love knows in the emotional 
nature. Duty is Hke the material object of form 
and color which the eyes behold. The conscience is 
the organ of the moral nature, the eye which sees 
the grand proportions of duty, the hand which grasps 
it as men touch an electric health machine and are 
thrilled by it. 

Why is this discrimination vitally important? 
Because when we recognize duty as the object which 
conscience as a perception sees, we will be able to 
enlarge and perfect our idea of duty in well-defined 
manner and we will know also how to train conscience. 
Until we recognize the distinction, confused as it is 
in Luther's definition, we shall not know where to 
begin moral progress. 

As duty is an object outside of conscience, to be 
known only by this special moral organ, just as 
beauty is only known by the esthetic taste, this duty 
can be enlarged, clarified, and perfected. It is the 
moral law as seen by conscience and felt by it, and 
as we study the moral law, either by ethical discussions 
or as revealed in the Scriptures, the sense of it grows. 
A study of the "meaningful" words and ideas of the 
moral life is illuminating. Words seem, indeed, in 
their origin and history to be living things. They 

[53] 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

are so closely related to living beings, the children of 
their brains and souls, that the words themselves 
seem to be born, grow, and decay. Like children 
they unconsciously reveal very much of their wonder- 
ful parentage which is the inner nature or complex 
natures of the living man. 

We are concerned now, of course, with the signifi- 
cant ideas of the moral nature: 

Duty, that is, due-ty, something we owe. In the 
Christian life it is made up of the detailed items of 
the bill God has charged against us in his account 
book, the Bible. Conscience looks over the bill and 
acknowledges the items correct and just. 

Obligation — of which the root is ligOj to bind, ohj 
over or against — to bind one over to another. The 
same root, ligo, is in ''rehgion" with re, again: which 
makes ''religion" mean binding over twice — once 
morally and then spiritually, shall we say? But even 
if this is fancy, the meaning of ''obligation" is clear. 

Responsibility, the answerableness of man to 
something or some one. Here a call to do something 
is implied and the response is required. The word 
"respond" comes from spondere, to promise, re, again 
— to promise back to him who speaks. 

Ought, 'Hhe weightiest word in the universe"^ — 
that is, weighty to a good man — is also derived from 
the idea "owe"; Anglo-Saxon, ahte, from agan, to owe. 

Morals are mores, customs or usages; ethics, the 
Greek equivalent, from ethos, meaning the same. 
* Joseph Cook, Boston Monday Lectures, "Conscience." 
[54] 



LIMITATIONS OF CONSCIENCE 

But this meaning is not unworthy, as it seems, when 
we think of the customs or usages being authori- 
tative or those of ideal men and women, which is 
probably its real sense. 

Virtue is from vir, the Latin for the ideal man, 
and signifies ideal manhood, or being the good 
man. 

Righteousness, justice, and goodness explain 
themselves. It is said that the idea of the good, or, 
in the German, guth, has an intensive force not known 
in the classic languages by any full equivalent. 

Dean French, in his 'Study of Words,'' says: 
"Conscience is not merely that which I know, but 
that which I know with some one else; for this prefix 
cannot, I think, be esteemed superfluous or taken to 
imply merely that which I knew with or to myself. 
The other knower whom the word implies is God, his 
law making itself known and felt in the heart; in 
the words of Dr. South 'Conscience, according to the 
very notation of it, importing a double or joint 
knowledge — to wit, one of a divine law or rule, and 
the other of a man's own action — and so properly 
the application of a general law to a particular 
instance of practice.'" Dr. Davis declares, '' Con- 
science is pure reason discerning moral law. . . The 
moral impulse is not conscience, but is conditioned 
upon the pure intuition of the law." If we substi- 
tute "perception" for "reason" this is a very fine 
definition as far as it goes. "Reason" does not 
"discern," as we know, but perception does, and the 

[55 1 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

definition is morally valuable in its discrimination 
of the moral impulse. 

This moral impulse is most frequently said to be 
conscience. That there is such a moral impulse in 
a good man to do the act, after conscience decides it 
is right, is well known. But it is in good men, not 
in the wicked, however clearly these men perceive 
the right. Their dominant impulse is always to the 
evil. So Professor Bowne^ says: "After having 
unfolded the ideals of character and conduct, we find 
men practically indifferent to them. Then we have 
to begin the study of moral and spiritual dynamics." 
This last sentence reveals the importance of knowing 
that the moral impulse does not come .directly from 
conscience and explains our failures with men when 
we trust to anything in a clear conscience simply 
and do not further develop "moral and spiritual 
dynamics." 

In good men, of course, after conscience decides 
the right, the impulse is toward it, but this impulse 
is plainly from good habits of righteousness already 
formed; from appetites, aspirations, or other predis- 
positions in the soul, and from the sense of obligation 
to God and his law. Wayland ^ says the impulse of 
conscience is in the "ought" it arouses, "It is right 
to tell the truth and I ought to tell it." This "ought," 
however, is the sense of obligation back of conscience 
in the moral nature, where it exists. As Wayland 

^Bowne, "Principles of Ethics." 
* Wayland, "Moral Science," p. 88. 
[56] 



LIMITATIONS OF CONSCIENCE 

says later, ^'Conscience is sometimes so disordered 
as not to feel the obligation." 

All these writers are talking of a good conscience 
in a mature Christian moral nature. So Kant speaks 
of duty: ''Duty! thou great, thou exalted name! 
Wondrous thought, that workest neither by forced 
insinuation, flattery, nor any threat, but merely by 
holding thy naked law in the soul!" But to some 
men a paltry threat or a strong passion knocks all 
the sense of duty they have out of their souls. 

Conscience is the clear unimpassioned judge and 
not the executive of the moral nature. The will of 
man, so vital a part of his moral nature, is the execu- 
tive, and habits, appetites, passions, and the whole 
moral character itself are simply grooves of former 
executive action of the will, repeated many times, 
into which it easily drops again, and starts to move 
by the well-known force of habit, whatever the deci- 
sion of conscience at the time. Every man who turns 
from an evil life to the good is conscious of the im- 
pulse downward after he sees the right, and he must 
make tremendous executive will action upward. Or, 

" I see the right and I approve it too, 
I see the wrong, and yet the wrong pursue." 

"Christian perfection extends chiefly to the will, 
which is the capital moral power of the soul; leav- 
ing the understanding ignorant of ten thousand 
things." 1 

* John Fletcher. 
[57 1 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

So is it equally with those who are good, when 
tempted to wrong. They feel a tide of impulse set- 
ting in their souls toward the right. The bad man 
feels also at times an impulse to the right, but this 
is because of former right life. Shakspere's striking 
passages on conscience are unconsciously Shakspere's 
own conscience. They are all alike in whatever drama 
you find them. For instance, one of the murderers^ 
of the Duke of Clarence says: "I'll not meddle with it 
(conscience) ; it makes a man a coward; a man cannot 
steal, but it accuse th him; a man cannot swear, but 
it checks him. 'Tis a blushing, shamefaced spirit 
that mutinies in a man's bosom; it fills me full of 
obstacles. It made me once restore a purse of gold, 
that by chance I found. It beggars anyone that 
keeps it." All this is the conscience of a man still 
tender at some points, still under the force of some 
former habits of doing right. Again ^r 

The dread of something after death puzzles the will, 
Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all. 

But in America, at the time of this writing, there 
is an epidemic of suicides. Where is the supposed 
universal dread of something after death in the 
natural conscience? 

Will all great Neptune's ocean wash this blood 
Clean from my hand? No; this my hand will rather 
The multitudinous seas incarnadine, 
Making the green one red.^ 

1 Richard III, Act I, Sc. 4. ^ Hamlet, Act III. 

^ Macbeth. 

[58] 



LIMITATIONS OF CONSCIENCE 

This is Macbeth's conscience. But see the callous- 
ness of Lady Macbeth at that time. 

An induction of the nature of conscience is not sci- 
entifically complete until we take the consciences of 
different kinds of criminals in action, the actual con- 
sciences of bad men in various vices, the conscience 
of the child, the boy, the youth, and the different 
kinds of conscience in an average church. Confusion 
about the confidently expected impulse toward the 
right when we appeal to wicked men has arisen from 
the fact that all writers and teachers upon the subject 
have been good men, as a matter of course, and have 
taken their own conscience as the norm. They felt 
the impulse. But take the keen analysis of George 
EHot, master student of real conscience: ''There is 
a terrible coercion in our deeds which may first turn 
the honest man into a deceiver and then reconcile 
him to the change. And for this reason the second 
wrong presents itself to him in the guise of the only 
practicable right. "^ Bulstrode is a pious villain. He 
explained the gratification of his desire to retain the 
property he dishonestly possessed into satisfactory 
agreement with his rehgion. "There may be coarse 
hypocrites, who consciously affect beliefs and emo- 
tions for the sake of gulling the world, but -Bulstrode 
was not one of them. He was simply a man whose 
desires had been stronger than his theoretical behefs 
and who had gradually explained the gratification of 
his desires into satisfactory agreement with his beliefs. 
^ Her characterization of Bulstrode in " Middlemarch." 
[59 1 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

Providentially, he argued, the property had come into 
his hands, and he would make better use of it than 
the original owners. '^ 

We must, therefore, distinguish conscience as the 
judge in the court which it is, from the impulse to 
the right the good man has, after conscience decides 
and recognizes that this good impulse comes from 
lifelong loyalty to the right, good habits, and char- 
acter. We shall sadly find in efforts to reform and 
convert bad men that such impulses are not dominant 
in them. 

The conscience of a prof essional burglar seems very 
curious and one-sided until we still further differen- 
tiate conscience. On many acts this man has a keen 
sense of right and wrong. He is socially pure and 
affectionate as a husband and father with a high 
sense of responsibility to his home. He is truth- 
ful and faithful to every promise. But upon the 
sin and crime of stealing his neighbor's goods he has 
no moral feeling. His conscience is seared at that 
point to insensibility. As Professor Bowne points 
out, ^^The selfish will is the great source of dis- 
honest casuistry and tampering with truth and right- 
eousness. One bent on wrongdoing never lacks an 
excuse." 

Another man, very impure and lustful, was the 
soul of honesty and veracity. The writer had long 
business dealings with him, without suspecting his 
impure Hfe, and often spoke of him as an ideal honest 
man, a man of his word. In other virtues he also 

[60] 



LIMITATIONS OF CONSCIENCE 

excelled, but he later confessed without blushing and 
without evidence of any conscience on the subject the 
shocking wickedness of nearly all his life.^ 

In a way common to his class, the burglar argued 
with the author — then a visitor for five years to the 
Pennsylvania Eastern Penitentiary. He persuaded 
his conscience that the world owed him a living, that 
the rich men he robbed got their goods and money 
dishonestly, and that he made good use of it. Such 
robbers seem to have no conscience as to robbery, 
but on questions of lying and the social vice they 
are sensitive and responsive to the right. 

Some sinful people have no scruples about profane 
swearing, Sabbath-breaking, or brutal fighting, but 
are conscientiously honest in business dealings and 
faithful to every trust committed to them. They 
would, with an oath, smash the head of a man who 
would accuse them of stealing or l3dng, and they 
will prove that they were all right on those points. 
But conscience would be dead in the other matter, 
however. On the other hand a church member 
whom I know is very pimctilious about Sabbath 
observance and purity, but loose in business deal- 
ings and untruthful. 

A Wahabi Mohammedan was asked what was 
the greatest of sins. ^' Undoubtedly, '^ he said, ^'the 
sin of denying the personal imity of the Godhead." 
"What is the second?" "Undoubtedly the use of 

* Roads, "Abnormal Christians," pp. 10-15, where other such 
are studied. 

[61] 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

tobacco." ''And how about murder, lying, adultery? " 
''Ah! God is merciful," he replied. ^ 

Some Italian soldiers committed murder and rob- 
bery and sat down to feast. One became greatly 
distressed in conscience. He had eaten meat, for- 
getting it was Friday.! "So the Pope of Rome can, 
as a matter of conscience, have no wife, but much 
wine; the head of the Mohammedan Church many 
wives, but no wine." ^ 

The child's conscience is important to study. It 
exhibits the beginnings of moral culture and its laws 
of growth. The child under six is a creature of vio- 
lent impulses chiefly physical reactions. He seems 
wicked, disobedient, willful, selfish, but these are the 
impulses of an unformed moral nature. We train him 
by giving careful and repeated teaching of God's law 
in his childish life, and by describing the acts and cir- 
cumstances of things he is doing or purposing to do. 
Then his conscience responds, and he gradually ac- 
quires conscientious life, deciding moral questions more 
and more clearly. We regard the child just as we do 
the uninformed judge in the court when a case comes 
before him. We give him the law fully and we detail 
the act in all its circumstances and conditions. 

The good man with a conscience is not alike keen 
on all virtues or sins. On his duty to be honest 
he may be faithful, but on his responsibility to train 
his children how indifferent! Or he may be keen as 

1 Dr. Kellogg's "Handbook of Comparative Religions," quoted in 
" Conscience and Its Culture." 

[62] 



LIMITATIONS OF CONSCIENCE 

to home duties and loose in business dealings, keen 
as to his duty to the poor and indifferent in personal 
morals. The Pharisees were too conscientious to 
enter Pilate's judgment hall on the feast day, but 
they had no hesitation about murder and perjury. 
They "strained at gnats and swallowed camels, '^ — 
a wonderful word of Jesus about conscience. An 
American preacher recently declared that "the sins 
of behevers materially differ from the sins of unbe- 
lievers," being regarded by God with more leniency, 
"because God sees the beHever only in Christ." 
This seems shockingly blasphemous; but see the 
many dishonest business men in our churches, faithful 
to church duties. Is not their conscience Hke this? 

From this wide induction of particular consciences, 
which seem clearly typical, the following facts appear 
evident : 

I. Conscience has to do with particular acts and 
specific virtues or vices, not with general goodness 
or evil. It is judge only in the case before it and 
decides whether in that case the man does right or 
wrong. Lotze^ says, "Conscience is moved to single 
verdicts of approval or disapproval by the contem- 
plation of single fixed cases." It is well known that 
consciences are often more keen on a mere impropriety 
which they have studied than on a sin not so keenly 
looked into. Men feel mortified for having failed to 
return a courtesy when they cheat without scruple. 

^I.otze, "Outlines of a Philosophy of Religion," Macmillan's, 
p. 152. 

[63] 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

Of any particular sin or vice several times committed 
it is true that 

Vice is a monster of so frightful mien, 
As to be hated needs but to be seen; 
Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face, 
We first endure, then pity, then embrace.* 

2. Conscience itself is limited to a simple perception 
of right or sin in an act in the light of law revealed to 
it and the fullness of the statement or understand- 
ing of the case before it. Lotze says, "Conscience 
resembles our faculty of cognition." 

3. The impulse to do the right, when it exists, is 
due to the habits of the man concerning the good 
act contemplated or to his general habit in promptly 
and fully responding to the right. It is not con- 
science""directly which gives the impulse. The length 
to which the whole moral nature is identified with 
conscience is shown in Joseph Cook's Boston Monday 
Lectures on " Conscience." He says: " Conscience is a 
perception of rightness or wrongness in our motives; 
a sense of oughtness which postulates God; a fear 
of future punishment. It is infallible in its field, 
deciding upon the rightness of motive. Conscience 
emphasizes the ought.'' That was really all true of 
Mr. Cook's splendid moral nature. It is not the defi- 
nition of the conscience of other Boston men, of vice, 
political corruption, and crime, nor of many good 
church people. Daniel Webster's famous phrase, 
** Murder will out," has made a profoundly wrong 

1 Pope. 
[64] 



LIMITATIONS OF CONSCIENCE 

impression. In spite of hundreds of murders in our 
large cities undetected and unavenged, hundreds of 
men whose hands are red with blood walking our streets 
boldly/ and of other crimes utterly concealed, men will 
quote ^'Murder will out" and will expect as univer- 
sal the really rare and long-delayed self -exposure. 
Webster said: "There is no evil that we cannot face 
or flee from but the consciousness of duty disregarded. 
A sense of duty pursues us ever. It is omnipresent, 
like the Deity." How fine the work of a pastor if 
that were true of his flock universally! But it is 
not if the history of crimes or of disgraceful insen- 
sibihty to great obligations is to be beHeved. It is 
worse than foolish to trust the natural conscience 
for this impulse or for effects which require the train- 
ing and enlightening of conscience to secure. The 
powerful conviction of the Spirit of God works 
miracles in hardened consciences, but the conscience 
Webster described was his own; for he could say, 
''The greatest theme that ever came into my mind 
is my personal responsibility to Almighty God." 
How fearfully he must have suffered for his ''seventh 
of March speech" compromising on slavery! But 
did Preston Brooks ever suffer in conscience for his 
murderous assault on Sumner? 

4. The sinful man differs in attitude of conscience 
to different sins. He is insensible on his besetting 
sin, but may be keen as any saint on others. In each 

^ A recent popular magazine estimated hundreds of bold mur- 
derers undetected in one city. 

[65 1 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

he acts not on general sin, but on specific sins or 
virtues in particular circumstances and according to 
his apprehension of the law of God on that subject. 
By this he sees the right or the wrong. Then 
former influences or habits on that act may impel 
him toward it, but the dominant impulse from later 
conduct moves away from it. 

5. Practically this clear view of conscience has 
value in indicating where and what to teach and 
train in the reformation of the bad man and in the 
development of the good man. We must show to 
him, and keep before ourselves, that the habits and 
sinful nature drive to evil even in the clearest sense of 
duty the other way, and that we must exhibit the 
duty no less strenuously, but now also point out the 
hopelessness of salvation without the regenerating 
change of appetites, habits, and character by God's 
Holy Spirit. 

Conscience is to be viewed, also, in its decisions 
made respectively before and after an act. Before 
the act, as conscience considers it in the light of 
Christian law, it decides, let us say, that it is right, 
a duty to do. But it decides only for that instance. 
After the act is actually done conscience may con- 
demn for the imperfect way it was done, or may 
approve when it is fully carried out. Hence the 
importance of having all the circumstances and 
possibilities of the act before conscience at first, or 
in court parlance (for Kant is right in calling con- 
science the ''inner court," or better, the judge of that 

[66] 



LIMITATIONS OF CONSCIENCE 

inner court), that the case submitted should be fully 
stated as well as the law applying to it be fully set 
forth. Then the judge's decision will not require 
reversal or modification after the act. 
Shakspere gives the effect of conscience after acts: 

I feel within me 

A peace above all earthly dignities, 

A still and quiet conscience .^ 

That when approved; now when condemned: 

Suspicion always haunts the guilty mind; 
The thief doth fear each bush an officer.^ 

There is much said about the boldness of innocence 
and the timidity of guilt, but this is not universal. 
Solomon says, *'The wicked flee when no man pur- 
sueth, but the righteous are as bold as a lion." 
And Shakspere again: 

What stronger breastplate than a heart untainted! 
Thrice is he armed who hath his quarrel just, 
And he but naked though locked up in steel 
Whose conscience with injustice is corrupted.^ 

But on all this Kant has this conclusive word, "In 
order to imagine the vicious man tormented with a 
sense of his transgressions, it must first represent him 
as morally good in the main trend of his character." 
Experience, however, shows that after an act con- 
science is usually for the moment clearer and truer. 
The fire of passion which impelled to the act and 
then beclouded conscience is now spent, the act 

1 Henry VIII, Act III. ^ Henry VI, Part III. 

3 Henry VI, Part II, Act IH. 

[67] 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

itself in its consequences stands out more distinctly, 
and the expected pleasure or profit is disappointing. 
So the still small voice finds for a moment the better 
hearing. But in the bad man this is only for a 
moment, for he immediately drowns conscience with 
the clamor of false excuses and specious pleas. 

Like all human organs, conscience may be trained 
to accuracy and promptness. And like these other 
organs it has its perils. The eye has its illusions, 
the ear its false roaring, and the conscience its color 
blindness and double images. Going to the motives, 
conscience will discover several back of an act, 
mixed motives, and may become confused among 
them. It is rarely that several strong motives are 
not present. We see them in judging others. But in 
self- judging it is still more difficult to determine the 
dominant motive. No deception is so common in 
morals as self-deception as to what really moved us 
to a given action. The moral eye viewing self is too 
close to its object to see all the outline or proportions 
of a deed. 

How, then, may conscience be trained more accu- 
rately and decisively to perceive the right and wrong 
in us? By exercising it with the purest motives. 
Christ gives the practical beginning in duty to God, 
"The first commandment is. Thou shalt love the 
Lord thy God with all thy mind, heart, soul, and 
strength"; love him more than houses or land, wife 
or children, or Hfe itself; love him with such an 
intensity as to seem to hate houses or lands, wife 

[68] 



LIMITATIONS OF CONSCIENCE 

and children. That is, exclude from love to God all 
possible admixture of motives that might be selfish 
or sinful. This is making "the eye '' (which is really 
here the conscience) "single and the whole body shall 
be full of light." And this means that the moral 
"eye" being trained to see God only, it will be sure to 
acquire absolute purity of motive for all other duties. 
Contrariwise, if the religion be of mixed motives, — 
love to God, but also love for selfish ambitions, 
possessions, or place, — the whole life will be con- 
fusion in the darkness mixed motives engender. 

Supreme love to God must be insisted upon as the 
beginning of practical moral culture. It is at this 
point of love to God that the religious life, distinct^ 
as it is from the moral life in essential nature, really 
unites with moral activity. The rehgious and the 
moral below that point are distinct, as we see in the 
irreligious man who has good moral character, and 
just as clearly in the rehgious man who has loose 
morals. Love to God is both religious and moral, the 
loftiest activity in worship and the noblest motive in 
all the virtues. Here conscience starts with confident 
step. For here the mixed motive is most readily 
seen. 

On the other hand, in many activities in relation 
to man, self-interests have some rightful place though 
subordinate, and the problem of motive is to have 
the dominant one right. Here the peril is that the 
man himself may mistake the relative strength of his 

1 Roads, "Abnormal Christians," Chaps. VIII-XIV. 
[69] 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

various motives. Love to God must be the strongest 
motive in every act in clear consciousness, as it may 
be, so that "whatever we do, whether we eat or 
drink, we do all to the glory of God.'' Otherwise, 
men plainly selfish to other eyes will maintain that 
they are very benevolent and self-sacrificing. W. B. 
Carpenter 1 says on this subject: "Individuals in 
whose character the love of truth and justice and 
the benevolent affections are the prominent features, 
and who would shrink from any violation of those 
principles for any selfish purpose whatever, are sorely 
perplexed when they (truth and justice and benevo- 
lence) are brought into colHsion with each other." 

Paul 2 thus exercised his conscience to be always 
void of offense toward God and man. There is great 
gain in recognizing the peril of mixed motives. What 
are some of the tests of their relative strength? i . The 
joy the soul feels in serving each object, God, others, 
self. 2. The time instinctively spent in the service 
of each. 

Training of conscience means also ability to detect 
the motives that are always wrong, like envy, pride, 
revenge, hate, indifference, and to feel strongly that 
they are always wrong. The differences between 
these, always wrong, and their very similar motives 
which are right is very subtle and easily disguised. 
For example, envy is the sinful end of a laudable 
desire to possess the good qualities of another; pride 

1 Carpenter, "Mental Physiology," p. 244. 

2 Acts 24: 16. 

[70] 



LIMITATIONS OF CONSCIENCE 

the sinful excess of a proper self-regard; revenge a 
sinful extension of righteous indignation. And so 
on, through all the virtues and sins. Only through 
continuous training of the eyes of conscience to dis- 
tinguish the finest shades of moral colors can the real 
identity of sins be detected and exposed. 

The enlightenment of conscience on the side of 
law is through the word of God. The law to be 
appHed to every case is found in the Scriptures. Its 
final word is from the lips of Christ, and its perfect 
example of obedience is in the life and the spirit of 
Christ. His was the Christian conscience, and it is a 
profound moral duty to read and study the Scriptures. 
Neglect of this study leaves the moral sense in gross 
darkness for which man is responsible. The primary 
duty of conscience is to go to this light to know 
colors and nature just as it is a duty to the eyes to 
go to adequate light for reading and work. 

The Christ who taught gospel ethics is the creator 
of the human conscience, and the conscience answers 
to the Bible as the lungs do to the air or the eyes to 
the light. If there were any laws of Christ's moral 
code that cultivated conscience at its best could 
declare unconstitutional in morals, that would be 
good defense, for not obeying them, at God's final 
judgment. But there are no such laws of Christ's 
teaching which the keenest of human consciences can 
discern to be self-seeking or subversive of love and 
justice. So the individual conscience owes it to itself 
to turn on all the Ught of Christ. 

[71] 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

To get all this discussion of conscience into one 
clear view: We see that conscience is the sense of the 
lightness or wrongness of actions and their motives, 
in such light of God's moral law as it may have, and 
with such measure of knowledge of all the circum- 
stances of the act as may be given to it. The value 
of the decision of conscience depends upon these 
factors of the law and the facts in the case. 

We enter therefore the high court of conscience and 
study the cases coming before its moral tribunal. 



[n] 



V 

IN THE COURT OF CONSCIENCE 

CONSCIENCE, in still more exact discrimi- 
nation, is judge in a supreme court of the 
soul, a court within after the modern ideals 
of such a court of justice. Let it be remembered that 
this modern court is the long-developed creation of 
Christian ethics to determine right and wrong as 
actually done. Is it not really a concrete extension 
of conscience into society? It serves certainly as a 
fine parable of the processes of conscience. Like 
such a court, conscience has its array of advocates, 
witnesses, executive, and all before it; conscience the 
judge as in a supreme court but here deciding upon 
both the facts and the law. 

Its jurisdiction is the whole moral life, but "all 
life is startlingly moral; there is never a moment's 
truce between virtue and vice." ^ The law here — 
for we are deaHng now with conscience in Christian 
lands — is the moral teaching of Christ. The con- 
science, Hke the supreme court judge, is the eye upon 
the moral world, the ear that discerns when harmony 
is reached, the smell which detects the wholesomxe 
and the noisome, the taste which knows the sweet 

* Thoreau. 
[73 1 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

and the nauseous, and the touch testing the solid or 
shaky in foundation and structure. 

But it is the whole man that uses the conscience 
in moral vision, just as the whole man looks through 
his eyes upon the material world. What he sees, in 
each case, depends upon all he knows and all he is. 
For example, four men gaze upon a field of ripe golden 
wheat waving in the glory of the summer sunshine. 
One sees a beautiful landscape, for he is an artist 
and revels in the colors, lights, shades, and attractive 
forms; another sees toil and rich money returns in 
the field, for he is a farmer; another sees the struc- 
tural character of the plant, for he is a botanist, 
and the fourth sees simply the novel waves like a 
sea of gold and the wonders of God's creation, for 
he is a reflecting Christian man from the city. The 
eyes of all are the same probably, but in each case 
the whole man sees through them; the man sees by 
the eyes according to what is in him of knowledge 
and experience. So conscience, the judge, will see 
and judge by what is in the subject or by what can 
be revealed to him of all that is before him. Hence 
the need of thoroughly *' trying the case." 

But, let us insist, the action of Christian conscience 
in man's life is a simple matter. It is essentially 
a judicial decision upon a moral law point involved 
in the specific human case brought before it. We 
go into this unique but real court and study it. Its 
value in a moral decision, or, in other words, its 
weight and finality in the moral realm, depends on 

[74] 



THE COURT OF CONSCIENCE 

the one hand upon its adequate information about 
the detailed circumstances of the case, the obligations 
involved, and the relations sustained — all the com- 
plete statement of the case; and on the other hand 
upon the knowledge conscience is given of the moral 
law and its true appKcation to the case. In the judge, 
conscience, it requires subordination of all feehngs, if 
possible, the ehmination of all feelings in the decision, 
just as we demand this of the judge in our courts. 
Conscience sitting on a question of Christian action 
should be a judge with cool and absolutely just in- 
tellect. It is concerned now only with a pure point 
of law in a specific case. 

For instance, take to conscience the difficult 
question of the right or wrong of a Sunday pleasure 
excursion for a poor man's family. There is at once 
a feeling of sympathy for man, wife, and children, 
deprived of all but a very few holidays in a year and 
penned up in a small hot cottage or tenement rooms; 
there is also a warm appreciation of the physical 
benefits of the trip and of the strengthening ties 
of love effected. Should this decide the question? 
This does decide it, in many minds; but surely it is 
a question very seriously to be considered whether 
the Sunday excursion may not after all be taken at 
too great a cost, present and future. Such Sunday 
hoHdays, if generally taken, would certainly under- 
mine the observance of Sabbath law, would employ 
many working people in running the excursions, 
would increase the demand for the abolition of all 

[ 75 ] 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

Sunday rest laws, and so fatally weaken the church's 
power to resist it, and soon the Sunday would be at 
an end and the poor workingman would not even 
have the day with his family. Then, as the result of 
the relaxation of general moral restrictions and the 
lowering of moral ideals caused by the weakening or 
abolition of Sunday rest, the workingman would 
receive no more wages than he now does for six days' 
work. Is the Sunday excursion wise at such a cost? 
Let us get the whole case before us. 

Christian conscience will remember that the Sab- 
bath law is not only a part of the Decalogue, but 
it long antedates the Decalogue; it goes back to 
Creation, when "the Lord blessed the sabbath day, 
and hallowed it." Christ teaches that it is a law 
based upon human need, — "made for man, and not 
man for the sabbath," — so that no human need can 
be argued for its infraction against the deepest human 
needs met by its observance. The law itself requires 
rest from toil for self and family, and also great 
care that the Sabbath rest of another should not be 
taken away by us. There must be rest for all or soon 
there will not be rest for any. The rest from toil has 
its chief purpose in the worship of God, meeting with 
him and fellowship with him. The day is to be holy; 
the two purposes, rest from toil and spiritual activity, 
being the two hemispheres of the Sabbath purpose. 
Does man need a day with God? Does he need 
and receive good from thoughts and activities with 
eternal realities? 

[76] 



THE COURT OF CONSCIENCE 

What is the actual experience of those who gladly 
and faithfully comply with this ideal of the Sabbath? 
Some of them are hard toilers with hands who fill 
the Sabbath with spiritual activities, and they prove 
that their bodies are more fully recuperated in that 
way than by idle lounging or pleasure excursions. 
Turning to intense spiritual Hfe wonderfully rests the 
physical weariness, while the hot, crowded excursion 
leaves all the family so physically exhausted it is 
hard for them to drag their bodies home late at night. 
On grounds of physical recuperation the case is all 
with the Sabbath as a joyful day of worship. 

When we consider further that the excursion does 
vast spiritual harm to the children and to the mother, 
who have other time for recreation during the week, 
it is still more perilous to take it. If .the father 
declares he must have it, will he take it at the cost 
of the Christian character of his children, with the 
probabiHty that, spiritual safeguards being removed, 
these children will yield in after years to terrible 
temptations to vice and crime? If it be claimed that 
the happiness of the family requires the excursion, we 
may reflect that deeper sources of lasting happiness 
may be dried up for the temporary and superficial 
pleasure of the exciting trip. Only rehgion in the 
home, sincere and active, insures permanent happiness 
and secures such training of character in the children 
that their future is virtuous, prosperous, and loving, 
— the happiness of father, mother, and all to the end 
of life. And further, let it be remembered always that 

[77] 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

only the Christian religion developed and spread 
with power promises better conditions for labor in 
the future. The workingman who helps to break 
down the Sabbath, to empty the churches of wor- 
shipers, and to defy the restraints of godliness digs 
the grave of all hope for his higher civilization, 
shorter hours, just compensation for his work, and 
richer comforts for his family. Workingmen are 
now seeing this plain truth and by a great national 
movement are striving for Sunday rest for all. Rail- 
roads in great sections are taking off Simday excur- 
sions for the same reason. We must not allow 
feelings of pity or sympathy or momentary love of 
excitement to move us, but we must decide by cooler 
judgment this larger question. 

Another illustration of the need of conscience 
sitting as an unimpassioned, a cool judge upon moral 
questions may be found in the right or wrong of oppos- 
ing the formation of labor unions. Some employers 
oppose such unions after much bitter experience of 
certain evils wrought by them. Some of the best 
workmen oppose the union because they do not need, 
unions; they can get work at the highest wages and 
at any time without union help. These workmen 
are often hampered by the rules of the union. Many 
employers and many of the best workmen oppose 
unions, for they have suffered real wrongs from them 
and sincerely in many cases feel they are harmful. 

But now let them dispassionately study the question 
in the light of Christian law and the actual condition 

[78 1 



THE COURT OF CONSCIENCE 

of all working people. What will they see to be duty? 
First, the Christian law to the case. In relations of 
man to man Christian law requires brotherhood and 
mutual help. In all Christian history, love and 
brotherhood have ever extended their reach into 
intellectual, social, physical, and now industrial 
conditions, and thus have been producing associations, 
societies, unions, leagues, lodges, brotherhoods, ever 
becoming closer. The Christian spirit has stimulated 
these unions of men in all human activities. It need 
not be maintained that all these associations have 
done has been good and right. Nothing human is 
wholly right. It may even appear that some associ- 
ations have been harmful, chiefly or wholly. It is 
clear that some labor unions have been harmful, 
because after associating as brothers in labor they 
adopted principles unbrotherly to employers and to 
certain classes of workmen. 

What, then, is the Christian remedy? The same 
as when the church became corrupt or the family 
impure or government tyrannical. It is not to abolish 
these social institutions, it is not to give up church 
fellowship, but to cleanse and reconstruct it in right- 
eousness; it is not to give up the family, but to build 
new families in love and virtue. It is not the union 
of laborers itself that is wrong in Christian ethics. 
On the contrary, such union is the inevitable fruit 
of the Christian law of love. It is the unbrotherly 
and inequitable feature of the union that is wrong. 
These features should be changed or eliminated in 

[79] 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

all unions, church, home, labor leagues; the unions 
should not be aboHshed. This is Christian law. 

Now study the case further. The workingman's 
actual condition and needs require unions. Alone he 
is helpless against the steady encroachments upon his 
wages and hours by united industries. He cannot 
safely ask for any improvement in wages or condi- 
tions of work, whatever the desperate needs of his 
family may prompt. He cannot intervene for the 
protection of a fellow workman. In most places there 
is no longer the relation of personal acquaintance or 
friendship between employer and workman, or even 
with the foreman. The competition of owners with 
each other or their union into trusts in the same busi- 
ness renders the workman's wages the easiest place 
of relief for competition or for larger profits, and the 
workman must endure or quit if he is not in union with 
other workmen. The conscience of employers should 
strenuously oppose all unbrotherly or unjust factors 
in the union, but strongly favor the union itself in a 
good form. 

Since the validity of personal conscience in all its 
decisions depends upon the degree of its knowledge 
of Christian law and upon the fullness of its informa- 
tion of all the things involved in the case before 
conscience, and since upon both law and facts all 
men are imperfect in varying degrees and new light 
may come in the future, how far shall men accept 
the decisions of their consciences? Only tentatively, 
of course, and with the mind always open for further 

[80 1 



THE COURT OF CONSCIENCE 

light, especially for the ^'much light which is yet to 
break from God's word." 

But since such decisions of conscience are made 
to be acted upon in the Christian spirit, the action 
after the best possible decision must not be hesitat- 
ing or uncertain. Christian action should always be 
with force, confidence, and enthusiasm. That very 
action reveals new light at times, and it is the really 
Christian attitude to decide in the new light just 
as forcefully. All great Christian leaders have thus 
acted without hesitating after careful decisions. This 
is the well-known maxim of Theodore Roosevelt. 
It is said that Comte, the philosopher, recognizing the 
peril of thoughtful men of this hesitation and uncer- 
tainty in action, made it a rule of his Hfe to do very 
vigorously and at once what he had decided to be right. 

Conscience at rare times has an apparent collision 
of different duties to decide. Duties to the home 
seem to come in conflict with equally imperative duties 
to the church, to country, and to other homes. There 
are exigences in national defense when there is no 
plea of home duties permitted for not enlisting in the 
army. This seems harsh and cruel, as also seems 
the word of Christ that a man must leave father and 
mother, wife and children and home at his call to 
special service. Yet in the end both are for the best 
interests of the very home thus deserted and, above 
all, the conflict of duties becomes the harmony of the 
best for all. 

[81] 



VI 

THE WILL, THE MORAL EXECUTIVE 

A CTION is initiated by the will. Conscience 
/-\ decides the moral character of an act before 
and after, but the impulse to do it comes from 
the will either now in original action, or from previous 
acts of the will which have become habits, and the 
habits, taken together, character. Conscience is like 
the friend pointing the right direction to the inquiring 
traveler. In the traveler is the desire to go the right 
way, and the inner movement to go follows. The 
will is related to conscience as the civil executive, 
the sheriff, to the judge. But again, as to the will, 
Muirhead ^ well says: "The will is the man himself. 
Avoid thinking of the will as possessed by the man. 
It is the man." John Stuart Mill calls character "a 
completely fashioned will." 

Kant declares, "There is nothing good without 
qualification but a good will." So we know action 
may be hindered or marred by imperfect result, but 
man can will to do perfectly right or to love perfectly. 
And the moral value of such determination toward 
the ideal is not lessened within if the will holds firm. 
As Burns says, 

1 " Ethics," pp. 51, S3. 
[82] 



THE MORAL EXECUTIVE 

What's done we partly may compute 
But know not what's resisted. 

But what is resisted gives moral culture just as 
really and effectively. 

There is, therefore, supreme moral significance in the 
will. We would be led far afield by a large psycho- 
logical study of the will, but while we must take heed 
that all our investigations and discriminations are with 
scientific thoroughness and accuracy, and all tested 
by the assured results of authorities, we inquire now 
for only the practical aspects of the will of man. 

Freedom of the will must be real and adequate 
to posit full moral responsibility. Aristotle says, 
"An action is right or wrong only when it proceeds 
from free will and personal responsibility, and its 
moral desert must be judged by the intention.'* Such 
freedom of will is necessarily only within certain 
limits, the Hmitations of moral decision to do or not 
to do and to do the moral opposite. Without alterna- 
tive power there can be no blame for wrongdoing, 
however terrible the consequences of the sin, and no 
praise for doing right, however glorious the results. 
ResponsibiHty, even in human law, requires power 
in the man to do or to refrain from doing and power 
to do otherwise. The criminal under absolute com- 
pulsion by another, were that possible, or under the 
stress of a disordered mind, which is often the case, 
is not adjudged guilty. 

"If compulsion determines conduct, then judgment 
does not concern itself so much with a man as with 

[83] 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

the power that compels him. Approval or disapproval 
of conduct is thus conditioned by the freedom of 
choice, in the ability to will freely ... to do or 
refuse to do. . . . What lies outside a man's power 
does not lie within a man's duty."^ 

But when the uncontrollable impulse arises from 
habit in the man himself, due to previous free decisions 
to sin, the man is guilty of the evil habit and of every 
evil act following. All the more clearly is he guilty 
because it requires very many and long-continued 
repetitions of an evil act or feeling to reach the stage 
of an uncontrollable impulse, if indeed that is ever 
really reached in this life. The man, however, who 
deliberately makes himself a slave cannot take advan- 
tage of that slavery to plead inability to act as a 
free man; even when the slavery to evil habit is 
far worse and more complete than he expected when 
he entered upon the wrong. It is for the man's 
responsibility "a real freedom of will if it is freedom 
but for himself^' ^ or freedom from all barriers but 
those erected by himself. 

The same principle holds on the side of right and 
the good. While no man is praiseworthy for doing 
the right which he cannot help doing, should there 
be such a case, yet if he does it automatically from 
his own long habits of doing right, he deserves all 
the greater honor. For then it has become a matter 
of being good as well as doing good. 

^Fairbaim, "Philosophy of Religion," pp. 6i, 75. 
' Mackenzie, "Ethics." 

[841 



THE MORAL EXECUTIVE 

We observe then that the acts of the will as the 
moral executive, when repeated in any virtue or vice, 
rapidly grow into habits which more and more nearly 
become automatic. Habits are the brain grooves or 
nerve tracks into which the will falls easily. They 
are the reward for continuous welldoing which renders 
what duties were at first hard and heavy, ''the easy 
yoke and the light burden" of Christ. And evil habits 
are the ever accumulating curse and crushing load 
for continual sinning. They render succeeding sins 
almost inevitable and ever approaching compulsion. 
"The education of the will is really of far greater 
importance as shaping the destiny of the individual 
than that of the intellect, and it is only by amassing 
and consoHdating emotional residua in given directions 
that this can be secured." ^ ''I am, I ought, I can, I 
will — the firm foundation stones on which we base our 
attempt to climb into a higher sphere of existence." ^ 

We may cultivate the will in promptness and 
force toward right acts when conscience has decided. 
The duty of doing at once is upon us. Hesitation is 
weakening to the moral nature. It fails to follow 
up the victory which is in the decision and gives 
the enemy, the tempter, another opportunity. Many 
good people fall into this fatal error of thinking that 
to hold the decision still open is good conscientious- 
ness. They lose the habit which becomes strongest 
by powerful initiative, for the good habit will 

1 J. D. Morell. 

^W. B. Carpenter, "Mental Physiology," p. 376. 
[85 1 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

retain through life the characteristics of its birth and 
early formation. Begun with immediate force, clean 
cut, and unhesitating, it will be vigorous and dehght- 
ful. Every good course ought to be leaped into 
with immediate enthusiasm. 

Look more closely at the nature of habits. All 
life runs swiftly to habits. The second act of any 
kind is perceptibly easier than the first. A mental 
and moral groove for it cuts deeper and deeper, so 
that an act at first difficult, let us say, and requir- 
ing strenuous effort, soon becomes almost automatic 
and inevitable. Then the will required for it dimin- 
ishes and it is a habit; if good, the blessed reward 
for repeated right-doing; if evil, the curse already for 
sin. As the Japanese say of drink, so it is of all 
actions, words, or feelings, good and evil: 

First the man takes a drink, 
Then the drink takes a drink, 
Then the drink takes the man. 

The word ''habit," from the Latin habeo, to have, 
is full of meaning; but whatever it means etymologi- 
cally, in human nature it means not that the man 
has the habit, but that the habit possesses the man. 
As has been declared: 

We sow a thought and reap an action, 
We sow actions and reap a habit, 
We sow our habits, reap a character, 
And character is destiny. 

Moral acts of veracity, honesty, purity, forgiveness 
of injuries, kindness, punctuality, fidehty, sympathy, 

[86] 



THE MORAL EXECUTIVE 

and self-sacrifice become habits at these points. 
All these and other good habits form that second 
nature, the developed nature, which constitutes the 
mature manhood of the Christian life. But always 
the habits are of specific virtues, of which one may 
be strong and another weak in the same man. A 
good man may have a fixed and powerful habit of 
truth-telKng and be weak on personal purity, or he 
may have a strong habit of purity and be loose on 
honesty. There is, to be sure, a reflex influence of one 
good habit upon another, but this influence is not 
determining in effect. So that there are in society 
and in our churches many abnormal characters, 
lopsided and perilously defenseless at one point or 
more, while strongly fortified at others. We speak of 
the weak point as ''the besetting sin," the place where, 
as might be expected, temptations assail the man. 
And the man is ruined and the soul, it may be, lost 
when entered at that one defenseless point, however 
powerful the rest of the character may be. Is not 
this the awful meaning of "he that offends at one 
point is guilty of all," or, as the American Revision 
translates it, "he that stumbles at one point," will 
surely fall? The general good character of a man, 
accused of just one crime, is pleaded in extenua- 
tion of it, but is never a defense to acquit of it. 

Virtues and vices, therefore, are simply habits. 
They are the crystallized acts of the will in successive 
deposit. Virtues and vices are born in the will 
and a man is just what his will is or has become. 

[87 1 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

The very perplexity of moral conditions may cause a 
conscientious man to hesitate at first, then hesitate 
repeatedly, and soon form the enervating, fatally 
weak habit of indecision. The line is very subtle. 
But after thoughtful study and decision in the best 
light, even if not fully clear in every particular about 
the act, if action is important, the will ought to 
be positive and powerful. Do with the might of a 
strong will whatever conscience decides ought to be 
done. The one exception to this is in matters of 
personal pleasure or profit simply, where action is 
not immediately necessary and the only loss will be 
a self-denial. When these are doubtful the Christian 
principle is to decide not to do them. 

The two mighty pillars of character, the two 
fundamental moral habits, are keen conscientiousness 
and a powerful will. Both may become true habits 
by repeated and undeviating exercise in all the life. 
To examine afresh every action by our own conscience 
in the latest light and courageously to act, whatever 
the precedents or the doings of others, even of the 
best Christians — that is one pillar. After the 
decision, to throw the whole soul immediately into 
the right course — that is the other pillar. Upon 
these two pillars rests the glorious temple of Christian 
character, the temple the Holy Spirit of God will fill, 
and no Samson of evil is strong enough to move those 
pillars. For they are not of stone, made in blocks 
one upon another, but living trees with roots deep 
down among the rocks and with trunks of unwork- 

[88 1 



THE MORAL EXECUTIVE 

able wood. These two are closely interdependent. 
A powerful will makes a still clearer conscience,, and 
the conscience reenforces the will. 

This combination or team of a strong will instantly 
responsive to clear conscience is what made Saul of 
Tarsus surrender immediately to Christ when the 
Lord appeared to him at Damascus, turn right about 
face, and in one sweeping decision change his whole 
career. It was the perfect proof of his claim to have 
always exercised himself to have a conscience void 
of offense to God or man. This strong will moved 
by conscience is the farthest from stubbornness of 
former opinion, — the mulishness excusable in a 
mule, for by some freak of nature he was made that 
way. But in a man the pride of mere consistency 
is, in Henry Ward Beecher's words, ^'the habit of 
small minds.'' Saul of Tarsus at Damascus is a 
magnificent illustration of a really powerful and 
finely cultivated godly will. 

Habits, or crystalHzed will, are also inner virtues. 
Such are habits — habits of sympathy felt, of humil- 
ity, of good desires, of aspirations, motives, of faith 
in man, of hopefulness, of love, of conscientiousness, 
and powerful will, as we have just seen. 

The strength of habits depends upon powerful 
initiative, uninterrupted repetition of the good act, 
and repeated reenforcement by latest conscience. 
Uninterrupted repetition is of prime importance. 
A single break in the early stages of forming a good 
habit is serious. It leaves a gap in the groove 

[89] 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

requiring caution ever after or extraordinary cultiva- 
tion to cover. 

Be strong! 
We are not here to play — to dream, to drift, 
We have hard work to do, and loads to lift. 
Shun not the struggle — face it! 
It is God's gift.i 

1 Maltbie D. Babcock. 



90 



VII 

THE RELIGIOUS NATURE TO THE AID OF 
THE MORAL NATURE 

HOW shall we in daily living bring the resources 
and power of the spiritual nature to the aid 
of the moral nature? The spiritual nature 
may be in the closest relation to the moral nature; 
there is a point in Christly love to man where the 
moral and the religious coalesce. But there are good 
men morally who are not religious, and in some cases 
really anti-religious, whose goodness, as far as it goes, 
by any fair test, is as sincere as the Christian man's 
goodness. They have not what Matthew Arnold's 
minimum definition of religion calls "morality 
touched with emotion," or, what he means by 
this sober word "emotion," fire or enthusiasm, but 
they have honesty, veracity, fidelity, and sympathy 
with other virtues. They have these virtues and love 
to exercise them. 

Moral men get these virtues in Christian lands 
from Christ's teachings, which have permeated all 
thinking. They are the fruits of the kingdom out- 
side of the walls which we also claim for Christ. 
The moral man, whatever his own conscious attitude 

[91] 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

to Christ or his salvation, is saved from barbarism 
by Christ's influence. Strange that all of them do 
not see it. 

The condition of being moral and not religious 
shows that there is a clear distinction between these 
two natures in man. This moral man who is not a 
Christian is the problem of Christian workers, and 
none of them fail to see the two distinct natures in 
him. There is also a Christian man who is deeply re- 
ligious, but not so highly cultivated in moral qualities, 
not so keen in moral discriminations, not so mani- 
festly conscientious ; he is loose in moral conduct and 
habits. He shows that a kind of spiritual growth is 
possible without carrying with it the highly moral. 
This man may become a pretentious hypocrite, but 
not necessarily so, nor in all cases. He is an uncul- 
tivated moral nature while giving large attention to 
the spiritual, a problem more pressing and more dis- 
tressing in our churches than the other.^ 

What, then, shall we do? 

I. Recognize that the moral and the religious are 
distinct, that they may fall apart, but that they 
ought to be inseparably joined in the Christian Hfe. 
The reHgion of Christ is the only one which thus 
joins them. John Stuart Mill says: "Morals in 
Greece derived little benefit from religion and became 
independent of reHgion." And James Sully said, 
"Earlier forms of reHgious sentiment are detached 

*See Roads 's "Abnormal Christians," where the author philo- 
sophically discusses this problem. 

[92 1 



AID OF THE MORAL NATURE 

from morality." So also Benjamin Kidd and others. 
BushnelP says: ^'In strict propriety the moral is 
quite another and vastly inferior thing. The spir- 
itual is even as much higher than the moral as the 
moral is higher than the animal. To have a spir- 
itual nature is to be practically related to the person 
of God himself." He holds, also, the vital doctrine 
that a religious nature is a part of inherent human 
nature which "a bad man has as truly as a good 
man; a most confirmed atheist has it." Professor 
Bowne 2 says: "In actual life ethics and religion 
strongly influence each other, and man is the subject 
and source of both." But these two natures are 
distinct and may be separated in fact in any man. 

Heathen religions in their very worship are grossly 
immoral, replete with drunken orgies, cruel and 
murderous rites, lies and frauds by the priests and 
oracles. Even ancient Judaism, as the prophets 
exhibit it, was continually letting temple sacrifices 
fall away from moral obedience. The Pharisees of 
Christ's time were pious, but robbers of widows and 
orphans. Many of them were unclean socially, as 
they admitted by slinking away when Christ bade 
the man without sin among them cast the first 
stone at the fallen woman. Romish corruptions are 
due to the same divorce of religion and morals, and 
protestant churches are far from being free from 
the same kind of reHgion without moral standards 

1 Bushnell, Sermon on "The Spirit of Man." 
^Bowne, "Principles of Ethics," p. i88. 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

when many of the unscrupulous leaders of dishonest 
business and corrupt politics are high in their mem- 
bership. With pious eyes turned upward they keep 
their hands deep in their neighbors' pockets. 

The peril of religious immorality is that the reli- 
gion makes the immorality worse. The rehgious pro- 
fession becomes a salve to the soul when pricked by 
the conscience for its wrongs to men. Subtly the man 
deceives himself into thinking that in some way a 
Sunday piety atones for the week's wrongdoing, that 
his religion places him above the ordinary sinner in 
God's favor, and that his sins are not so heinous 
because he claims to belong to Christ's church. In 
truth they are far more so, for that reason, in God's 
sight, and it was upon such people, the immoral, 
thieving, greedy Pharisees, that Jesus poured out 
his most terrific judgments. But, as Professor Bowne 
declares, *'the ecclesiastical conscience has varied 
all the way from the puerile to the diabolical," and 
these Pharisees, instead of becoming penitent under 
Christ's rebuke, showed again their real character 
by murdering him. While doing that dreadful deed 
they were also punctiliously refusing to enter Pilate's 
secular judgment hall lest they should be defiled 
and not then be able piously to participate in the 
passover feast! The Jesuit casuistry shows the 
lengths to which an immoral religiousness will pro- 
ceed: cunningly justified murder, ruthless robbery, all 
abominable hypocrisies, lies, and corruptions. What 
we now insist upon is that all this goes on by psycho- 

[94 1 



AID OF THE MORAL NATURE 

logic processes the same in all natures. Divorce 
righteousness from religion and there is left a religion 
which itself becomes a fatal handicap to a return to 
righteousness. 

2. The faith of the Christian must, therefore, be 
a ''faith that worketh by love," a faith that works 
out into brotherliness, sympathy, equitable business 
dealings, justice, righteousness in all things. How 
can faith do this moral quickening and strengthening? 
It is faith in the God of righteousness if it is true 
Christian faith, in God who hates oppression, 
greed, and all crimes of man against man; a faith 
which discerns righteousness in God as clearly as it 
sees his love, and dwells upon righteousness as joy- 
fully and continually as upon his love. This faith 
expresses itself in prayer to God for the overthrow 
of all wrongs upon humanity and for the spread of 
justice and brotherliness. It longs for the righteous- 
ness of God, it prays with great emphasis that God's 
will may be done upon earth as it is done in heaven. 
There is surely tremendous strengthening to the moral 
nature in such faith in God. The whole religious 
impulse gets back of the conscience, enHghtening it, 
and back of the will, giving it power. John Caird ^ 
says: ''Religion consists not so much in doing spiritual 
or sacred acts as in doing secular acts from a sacred 
or a religious motive. A life spent amidst holy things 
may be intensely secular; a life, the most of which is 
passed amidst the thick and throng of the world, may 
^ Caird, Sennon, "Religion in Common Life." 
[95] 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

be holy and divine. A Christlike spirit will Christian- 
ize everything it touches." 

Faith in God also as overruling Providence, the 
real King of this world, greatly reenforces moral 
character. It assures of the ultimate triumph of the 
right and it warns just as powerfully that all evil 
schemes and doings will come to naught in this world 
and to fearful judgment in the next. Such faith 
never loses courage in a long and desperate moral 
battle. It gets the inspiration of the divine voice in 
leadership, assurance of divine help and guidance in 
all phases of the struggle. This is the new life which 
Christ gives to morals. 

Faith in God brings regeneration of the sinner, a 
transformation which goes far beyond the spiritual 
into all the life. The moral nature is broken up and 
started anew. Old habits of evil are shattered, old 
lusts and inclinations destroyed in the new love of 
man, and conscience is made remarkably tender and 
responsive to duty. There are not, in the nature of 
the case, new habits given for the old, though the old 
are broken up, nor can a matured character of good- 
ness be given for the old character of sinfulness. 
These new habits must be grown just as the old habits 
of sin grew. Regeneration gives the advantage 
morally of a free new start, the old bondage gone, and 
the desires and impulses now toward righteousness. 
There are degrees of deliverance, in fact, from the old 
habits according to the faith of the penitent. In 
some cases it is complete, as with drunkards who 

[96] 



AID OF THE MORAL NATURE 

have changed absolutely and finally the old appetite 
for drink to disgust for it, and in the case of blas- 
phemers who have come to reverence God. In other 
cases it is a real victory over the evil habit, but there 
is a remnant of inclination to it which must be fully 
guarded against. 

These changes in moral character produced by 
regeneration, Professor James ^ insists, are scientif- 
ically cognizable, and he gives us a definition of the 
phenomena of regeneration, saying nothing, of course, 
as science could not, of the cause, "the reHgious 
reahties" which are taken hold of by the man. Here 
is his scientific definition: "To be converted, to be 
regenerated, to receive grace, to experience religion, 
to gain assurance, are so many phrases which denote 
the process, gradual or sudden, by which a self, 
hitherto divided and consciously wrong, inferior, and 
unhappy, becomes unified and consciously right, 
superior, and happy, in consequence of its firmer 
hold upon reHgious reahties." Harold Begbie, 2 
a disciple of WilHam James, gives ten remarkable 
instances in "a chnic in regeneration, '^ maintaining 
this scientific method in the investigation of the 
moral changes produced by conversion. They prove 
the tremendous power of the spiritual life when united 
to the moral. 

3. Christian love as produced by regeneration is 
the very heart of both the spiritual and the moral 

iProf, William James, "Varieties of Religious Experience." 
2 Begbie, "Twice-Born Men." 

[97] 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

character of man. We consider it only as related to 
the moral love, where it '' worketh no ill to his neigh- 
bour," where it "is the fulfilling of the law." The 
reenforced brotherly love, the deepest Christlike love 
will guard the rights of the neighbor fully, and with 
such love all lying, stealing, and other iniquities will 
not be committed again. It keeps perfectly the 
commandments of the Decalogue, or the eight 
prohibitions of God and the two commandments, as 
they really are, or first were; for very early the 
negative form was enlarged to positive love and so 
they are felt to be commandments to do. The second 
table of five commandments, or duties to fellow man, 
are kept by love. 

It keeps them perfectly. It does not spin fine 
points to evade them. It seeks no loophole in any 
law flowing from these commandments. 

The love of the regenerated soul does more than 
avoid harm. It keeps the Sermon on the Mount as 
well as the Decalogue and the new commandment 
of Christlike love with limitless self-sacrifice. William 
Seeker says, " God has three kinds of servants in the 
world; some are slaves and serve from fear; others 
are hirelings and serve for wages; others are sons 
and serve him from love." 

4. The other spiritual power of the abiding trio is 
hope. Christian hope, hope in God. This is more 
than any optimism, as Christian love is more than 
altruism ; for it is not only looking on the bright side, 
but it is looking on the upper side of things, which 

[98] 



AID OF THE MORAL NATURE 

is God. It may start with the noble pessimism 
of Schopenhauer and von Hartmann, which they 
define as, ^'A man's attitude to things who thinks 
with noble ideals," but not, as in their case, without 
counting in God. The Christian life has no optimism 
which blinds its eyes to real evils nor a pessimism 
which is deaf to the encouraging voice from above, 
but it is hope in God. This hope is after all a faith 
in God covering the future, as what is called distinc- 
tively faith is an appropriation of the blessings God 
offers in the present. Hope, faith in the future as 
safe in God, is the Hfe of moral endeavor in a desperate 
cause long struggKng for triumph. It makes possi- 
ble the willing sacrifice now of all things for the 
right in assurance of final triumph. It can plan a 
long campaign and never be discouraged by succes- 
sive early defeats. 

But the regenerated hfe means more than the in- 
dwelling faith, hope, love. It means the indwelling 
Spirit of God. He is the enduement of power to 
man, and this becomes the enthusiasm for righteous- 
ness, the enthusiasm for men.^ He touches moral 
Hfe with fire, an impulse to live for others in the 
noblest and largest way. Here is where Evolution 
has reached Henry Drummond's ^ beautiful "struggle 
of the fittest to survive changed to the struggle for 
the Life of Others." In Professor Bowne's noble 
words, "Christianity has enlarged the ethical field, 

1 Henry George, "I am for men." 
^Dnmmiond, "The Ascent of Man." 
[99 1 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

has transformed devotion to an abstract system into 
loyalty to a Person, and given inspiration to moral 
action." 

The mind has a thousand eyes, 

And the heart but one; 
Yet the light of a whole life dies 

When love is done.^ 

1 F. W. Bourdillon. 



100] 



VIII 

SUCCESSIVE MORAL FACTORS IN ACTUAL 
CASES BEFORE CONSCIENCE 

THE steps in the process of conscientiously 
deciding what to do in the increasing perplexi- 
ties of righteous Hving ought now to be more 
fully discriminated. By bringing every step of the 
process into full Hght we may learn how to detect 
errors and discern current perversions to wrong. 
And we will make these steps more sure in the future. 

I. "The case stated," as would be said in court, 
should come first. For example, ''What is the right 
way to treat an insistent beggar for food or 
money?" "What books shall the conscientious 
man read?" "What about reducing wages of your 
employees?" "What is our duty toward some 
modern views of the Bible and of Christ?" 

There is much more required to state each of these 
cases for a proper decision than the bare sentence. 
The complete circumstances of each moral problem, 
its ethical relations in all directions, and its place in 
character development and the progress of Christian 
civilization must be known. Socrates emphasized 
the fact that knowledge is essential to virtue, and by 
[101] 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

his searching questions laid bare everything connected 
with any moral act. Dorner says, ''Conscience is a 
knowledge of moral good and combines cognitive, 
legislative and judicial power." Very much depends, 
for a conscientious decision which shall be safe and 
final, upon the clear way in which we come to know 
the acts of Hfe with all their factors and all inherent 
circumstances in the court of conscience. 

Take now the matter of giving an insistent beggar 
food or money. What is a complete view of that 
case as related to moral obligation? We remember 
that begging has become a profession because of 
giving to men and women carelessly and without 
investigation; that large numbers of people not at all 
in need choose that way of acquiring goods and prop- 
erty — beggars in New York City frequently received 
forty dollars in a day. A thorough investigation 
by a man who for weeks lived their life, roomed at 
night with them, and followed every case he could by 
day, showed him that not even one of all the street 
beggars was worthy of help. Is this beggar a pro- 
fessional or, if not, is my giving to him Hkely to start 
him that way? Has he not already the "pauper" 
air and spirit, that most despicable degradation of 
manhood? Has his sense of honesty become so 
blunted by begging that taking goods without the 
owner's consent will be an easy slide downward? 

Do I say I will give him food, but not money? 
But if he is a professional he will save what money he 
has because he gets the food. So some beggars who 
[ 102 1 



FACTORS IN ACTUAL CASES 

own several houses live on food they beg. But I fear 
he may suffer hunger very seriously. Foolish fear! 
though if he did suffer, it would be the best possible 
experience for him. The writer told a man who 
whined that he was very hungry and had no place 
to lodge, "I am glad of itl I wish you would 
suffer a week more without a crumb to eat. It would 
take a good while for himger to reform you into an 
honest workingman. It is rather cold to-night, but 
you can keep warm by walking aroimd the streets 
all night. That's fine exercise for lazy bones!" It 
would have been interesting for an artist to catch the 
expression his face gradually took on as I proceeded. 
It was a mental quickening, but unfortunately there 
was not the sHghtest danger that such a shameless, 
completely pauperized scoundrel would suffer hunger. 
He could even make selection of what he wanted and 
throw much away of the generous donations he could 
whine out of thoughtlessly kind people. 

Where there is doubt in any case, of course, a full 
investigation is our duty, or the case must be turned 
over to someone for the purpose. The societies of 
charity have the perils Herbert Spencer ^ points out of 
perfunctoriness and multiplication of salaried ofiScials, 
but this is an excrescence of evil which can be cut 
off; the association of good people in charity work 
very thoroughly systematized is the only way to 
prevent real suffering while crushing vagrancy in a 

^Spencer, "Principles of Ethics," chapter on "Helping the 
Indigent." 

[ 103 1 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

large city. Those really needy must be sought out 
or must know of a place where they can receive 
immediate attention and help. And, strongly as we 
ought to reprobate the tramp, we must even more 
earnestly seek everyone who is worthy in need. 

It may be that this man is ill or out of work through 
no fault of his own, and that he is industrious and a 
good man. Shall I give to him in that case? Would 
it not be better to lend him money to be repaid when 
he can? It is sure to do him harm to give it outright. 
He will lose just that measure of self-respect which 
marks the difference between a manly, splendid work- 
ingman and an incipient pauper who will be always 
tempted when in trouble to revert to begging for 
a living. It is plain we should never give money 
if we can furnish work, even the lowest drudgery, 
to a man begging, or can help him to secure work 
elsewhere. 

Much more is involved in such a case, but a weak 
and maudlin sentiment should not lead us to do a 
permanent moral harm to a man while giving him 
temporary material relief. Many cases should be 
refused outright, as when a man or woman comes from 
a distant part of the city to beg at your door, or wants 
money to pay fare to a distant city, or has a baby or 
wife just deceased and wants money to pay for the 
funeral, and other manifest frauds. Refuse, but offer 
to turn over to the charity organization for investiga- 
tion and see how quickly the person leaves or tells 
you the "charity" is no good. 
[104] 



FACTORS IN ACTUAL CASES 

As illustrations of the necessity of a large study of 
all that is in a case before the court of conscience, 
take such questions as the following in present-day 
Christian Hfe. Who can decide any of these ofif hand? 
And who does not see that moral culture of the most 
helpful kind comes from a discriminating study of 
these cases? Here indeed is the field for the devel- 
opment of noblest moral character. Let us exercise 
ourselves upon these questions. 

I. What kind of books should the Christian read, 
what avoid, what make the staple of his reading? 
He has limited time for reading. 
The world of books is almost numberless, of good, 
medium, and poor on every subject, and of the 
good, very many beyond what he can read. 
There are books for various mental purposes, in- 
formation, strenuous mental culture, recreation, 
amusement, spiritual and moral help. The ques- 
tion is not, what and how much of each kind 
does he need, but how much can he reach? 
The Bible should have much time both in direct 
reading and in explanatory and illustrative lit- 
erature. Here are libraries upon libraries, from 
which he must take the cream. What is it? 
What critical books upon the Bible should he 
read and how much of such reading in propor- 
tion to all biblical study? 
Men differ in mental needs. What are my par- 
ticular needs at this time? 
Men's daily occupations supply some intellectual 
[105] 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

development. What does mine supply and what 
needs supplementing by my reading? The 
Christian should read for others, for his family, 
for conversation with his friends, for his Chris- 
tian work, whatever it is. 

How can I find my really great book, that will 
make me as great books have made other 
men? 

What a large case to be decided is a man's reading, 
and how complex the factors of life affected by it. 

2. What about reducing the wages of employees 
at this time? 

It seems an absolute necessity in the conditions of 
the business, but is it really so? 

Can economies in management avert it? 

My working people cannot live on less, at present 
rates of food and suppHes. 

Can I share the reduction in lower profits? 

It may be the alternative seems either reducing 
wages or closing out the business. 

There are few conscientious questions more pain- 
fully distressing to a good employer than this prob- 
lem. He must see that general conditions are wrong 
in many respects, and as a broad-spirited citizen exert 
himself to remedy the world-wide situation into which 
dishonest competition on the one hand and oppres- 
sive combinations on the other have brought both 
business and labor. What we urge here is that a 
complete survey of the case is vital to conscience. 

3. Other questions for exercise, some of which 

\ 106 ] 



FACTORS IN ACTUAL CASES 

will be discussed in later chapters more properly, 
may be named: 

Is fasting a duty at the present day? 

Is dealing in purely speculative stocks conducive 
to best moral character? 

What about games of chance in their personal 
effects? 

How far may parents oppose what seems to them 
an objectionable marriage of son or daughter? 

What is the responsibiUty of a stockholder in a cor- 
poration beyond voting against a wrong action. 

II. The next step in the process toward consci- 
entious decision is a clear definition of the moral 
law applying to the case thus fully stated. Plato 
founds moraUty upon relations of law and its end. 
"Conscience implies a supreme law, constituting an 
ultimate rule of right." ^ 

Here is required a comprehensive knowledge of 
the Bible in its development of Christian ethics. 
The Sermon on the Mount is based upon Christ's 
express declaration that the moral laws of the Bible 
are a progressive development. Isolated texts from 
earUer portions are taken to justify Mormon polyg- 
amy by Abraham's example, and the Mosaic laws 
of retribution and execution of heretics to justify 
murder of Mormon renegades and troublesome Gen- 
tiles. So men have taken certain expressions of 
preference for ceHbacy by Paul as a law for non- 
marriage of ministers of the church. Paul's word 
^American Cyclopedia, article "Moral Philosophy." 
[107 1 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

was, of course, as much for lay disciples, but was 
expressly stated to be simply his judgment of the 
better way for him under his peculiar circumstances. 
The judgment of Jesus, though he himself never 
married for obvious reasons, was clearly given at 
the marriage in Cana, in his express declarations in 
discourses, his use of marriage feasts in parable- 
teaching and elsewhere. And on all moral ques- 
tions Jesus claims to give the final word, claims to 
be the authority to which even all other Scriptures 
must submit. Jesus teaches the final interpreta- 
tion of Mosaic fundamental law and points out the 
imperfections in many Mosaic laws and regulations, 
which he extends and perfects. Where there seems 
a conflict between Paul and Jesus, by the same 
principle the supreme authority is Jesus, until we 
find the reconciliation of Paul to him, which doubt- 
less there is in a fuller study. 

No example, not even of the Apostles after Pente- 
cost, nor of Paul, Peter, or John, is final authority. 
Paul bade men follow him as he followed Jesus, so 
that only the example of Jesus constitutes a safe basis 
for inferences of the true Christian spirit and the law 
in particular cases. Jesus is the only authoritative 
precedent in all things in the court of Christian 
conscience. Whether Peter did right in visiting 
death upon Ananias and Sapphira or Paul in strik- 
ing Elymas blind may be an open question in 
the light of those times and circimastances. It is 
discussed later in this volume. But here we ask, 
[1081 



FACTORS IN ACTUAL CASES 

would Jesus in Peter's place have done so? We 
know he never did visit punishment upon a man in 
his earthly ministry, and rebuked James and John 
for asking him to send fire upon the inhospitable 
Samaritans as EHjah had done to those who opposed 
Gk)d. His word is full of meaning/ "Ye know not 
what manner of spirit ye are of. For the Son of 
man is not come to destroy men's lives, but to save 
them." 

The ethics of Jesus as he developed moral prin- 
ciples, obligations, and rights, in germ or more fully, 
are the standard. Practically, of course, there are 
very few instances where the Apostles' lives and 
words do not fully accord with Christ's standard, 
and in most laws the Apostles give a spirit-guided 
and helpful development of the germs of moral law 
uttered by Christ. The history of what Peter and 
Paul did is the story of imperfect men, so acknowl- 
edged by themselves, and must be critically held 
up to the spirit and example of Jesus for our safe 
guidance. 

Our next step is to find the law of Christ for the 
case in hand. If it is concerning the poor, what is 
Christ's law? or if it is concerning the Sabbath, what 
is the law? We again have fine moral culture in 
our study. Christ does not make any moral decision 
easy. Or is the law sought for that applying to 
reading? "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with 
all thy . . . mind" is the richly fruitful germ law he 

1 Luke 9 : 51-56. 
[ 109 ] 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

gives. The book I hold in my hand is a society 
novel, full of lustful escapades, divorces, vices, set 
up attractively. It may be worth while for me as a 
Christian to read one such book true to that wickedly 
wasteful kind of living, though even that is a ques- 
tion when it is always better on sin to be ignorant as 
children. But to make such reading my staple of 
entertainment or diversion, not to say to give most 
of precious reading time to it, is to give oneself to 
that very life in our souls. In Christ's thought it 
is as sinful, that is, harmful, to the person doing it 
as the vile life itself. It cannot promote my love to 
God nor the development of all my mind for that 
which love to God includes. 

Is the book I hold an attack on the Bible? Is it "a 
modern discussion" of the divinity of the Book? It 
may be the duty of the man who has time fully to 
go into the details of that discussion, or of the min- 
ister as a public teacher, to read it. But for the 
Christian man of Hmited time in reading, to open 
such profound questions of Biblical criticism, to 
read books on unbelief without having time to read 
the other side, or to go fully into the discussion, is 
mental folly, moral unfairness, and spiritual injury, 
especially to the Christian man who has spiritual 
experience of Christ as the true Saviour and his 
word as full of power. It is not that men fear to 
open questions about the Scriptures, but that in 
fairness they will not hear one side when they have 
not time to hear both, and will not entertain ques- 
[110] 



FACTORS IN ACTUAL CASES 

tions of doubt about that which they have abund- 
antly proven true. When a man's house has stood 
all his life, it is hardly a good use of time to dig up 
the foundations to see whether it is safe; especially 
after he has dug more than once before and satisfied 
himself. The practice of some men, who claim to be 
Christians, of running after every book that attacks 
the Bible, going over the grounds of unbeHef again 
and again, and never reading complete discussions is 
a curious form of mental and moral obtuseness. 

This is the more foolish in the face of the Hbraries 
of books in exposition and illustration of the Bible 
and Hbraries of exceedingly fascinating and valuable 
Biblical helps. What of these shall the good man 
read in the time for strictly religious reading? The 
Bible itself, carefully read, is of ever-growing interest; 
and books leading to the Bible, not away from it, 
not too many books about the Bible. 

The duty to read books to-day, and not simply 
newspapers, as some do, — two, and even three daily 
newspapers each day — is imperative. Books are the 
best creations in the reading world. A book may 
become a lifelong power in a man, may remake the 
man into noble proportions. Learn to read fast, 
but with intense concentration, so as to read much. 
It is possible to quadruple one's speed in reading 
with even greater concentration and real results. 
But the law of all is, taking the clearest sense, that 
it promotes love to God with all the mind at its 
best for the reading. 

[Ill] 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

III. The next step is that of conscience decid- 
ing. The case is fully stated, the Christian law is 
defined, conscience applies it and decides what is the 
right thing to do. It is a purely judicial decision 
on the law and the case. Then conscience brings 
into the light the inner motives of the heart and 
decides whether in so doing the man is good. 

IV. Next, comes in the good man, the impulse to 
do the right; in the bad man, the rising tide against 
the right. This impulse proceeds from the moral 
nature, good or evil, back of the will. It seeks 
expression by the will as the executive of the soul. 
Motives, either selfish, sordid, and sinful, or love to 
God and man, press for action at once. The will 
is king among these motives, and when it decrees, 
there follows the outward act or word. 

V. Then follows *' conscience after the act.'' It 
will pass upon what is done or said, and may fully 
approve the good. But its decision bears upon two 
things — how the act was done, and what were the 
motives actually in the soul. Here conscience may 
approve the motives, of which there often are sev- 
eral, as praiseworthy, and may condemn the act 
or certain features of it as not fully good; or con- 
science may approve the act as good and well 
done and condemn some of the motives or the 
dominant motive as wrong; or it may condemn 
both act and motive as failing to meet high ethical 
standards. 

After the bad act of an evil man, conscience will 
[ 112 ] 



FACTORS IN ACTUAL CASES 

review it, and here we discriminate carefully several 
different situations. If the act was that of passion, 
revenge, jealousy, lust, greed for money or power, 
or other fiery feehng, and was done hastily, con- 
science had little opportunity before the deed of 
judging it. So that in the case of first acts of this 
character, or among the first before the evil habit is 
formed, the verdict of conscience after the act is the 
more valuable. Then the passion, which drowned 
the voice of conscience before the act, has spent 
itself, the act itself is seen more clearly in dark sin- 
fulness, and the gratification and result are disap- 
pointing. Conscience may then be given a hearing 
and the man saved from committing the sin again. 
And if he is tempted he will do well to remember 
the conscience after the act. 

In acts done from fixed evil habits the conscience 
has become seared and corrupted, often to approve 
of the evil for specious reasons. Then its voice, 
even after the act, is not just and true. Only the 
power of the Spirit of God, convincing of sin, right- 
eousness, and judgment, can accomplish the awak- 
ening of such a soul where even conscience is on the 
side of evil. 

VI. The full approval of conscience after an act, 
which decides "well done" for both the motives and 
the deed, is the sweetest joy of the moral life. It 
loses nothing by repetition constantly and many 
times a day in the good man who always does his 
whole duty. Habits of virtue bear this fruit of 
[113 1 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

deepest joy most richly until the whole character 
made good furnishes "meat to eat that" the world 
''knows not of," and becomes the fore-echo of the 
''Well done, good and faithful servant" of heaven 
itself. 



[114 



IX 

SOME DECISIVE MORAL TESTS OF 
JUDGMENTS OF CONSCIENCE 

EVERY moral act involves all the man and 
every field of life. We may therefore 
test any particular act by its evident influ- 
ence upon these fields of moral activity. For the 
purpose of testing an action, let us glance at them 
in broad survey only and in simple outline. In 
later chapters there will be opportunity to study 
these moral fields more fully. 

I. What effect will this particular act have on the 
best development of self? I have decided, let us 
say, to do certain things on the Sabbath day; I have 
selected certain books to read, assumed a certain 
attitude to labor imions; I am treating my family 
thus and so, and I am adopting new regulations in 
business. Let me consider keenly and thoroughly 
the probable effect of any of these acts upon my 
own moral and spiritual character. My actions are 
sure to have a serious and powerful reaction upon 
myself. A wrong done to my neighbor is a greater 
wrong I do to my real self. A selfish act may 
very materially harm my neighbor and may hurt his 
[115] 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

feelings, but may not injure him morally, while to 
myself it does deepest moral injury; it makes me 
more selfish. Yielding to an evil desire debauches 
the soul, weakens its defenses of the good. 
I will inquire then as fully as possible: 

1. Will this act make me more brotherly and 
tender in sympathy for mankind, or less so? 

2. Will it increase my power to do right in other 
matters or weaken it? 

3. Does it affect my power of conscience favor- 
ably or harden and confuse conscience? 

These and other such tests are severe, but they 
must be appHed to what we are deciding to do in 
any particular case. 

II. What effect has this act upon my home, the 
members of my family, and home life? My home 
is the training center for my children's characters. 
How will certain business plans when known affect 
them and their power to resist temptations to dis- 
honesty in the fiery struggle before them? What 
training value has it for them or what harm? 

Home is the larger hfe for all the family. How 
will my act affect this larger life of doing good to 
all men, the life of benevolence to all, the higher 
aspirations of my children, the work for Christ? 
Home is the place for rest and recuperation from 
life's outer work. What I am about to do will 
either make this life sweeter or put thorns into it 
for me. Which? 

Home is the shrine of most sacred friendships, 
[116] 



JUDGMENTS OF CONSCIENCE 

friendship of husband and wife based upon genuine 
respect for each other as well as warmest affection. 
When my wife or husband knows of. this act will 
respect for me be deepened or diminished? 

III. The test of effect upon society, civilized 
Christian society, which is based upon mutual 
friendships and mutual high esteem. (The reference 
here is not to society as popularly understood. True 
Christian society is the enlarged godly home, where 
friendships are formed closer than kin of blood.) 
Test the proposed action or course of.Kfe, whatever 
it is, by its probable effect upon good society or its 
encouragement to evil society and its follies. 

IV. Business tests must be applied to acts of 
conscience falling into the business realm. Good 
business is good service to mankind. It regards 
itself as duty bound to give helpful service, to do 
ethical justice, and to go on steadily improving its 
product to perfection. What effect will my act have 
upon business, upon Christian business? Will it en- 
courage or hinder it, or will it stimulate wickedness? 

V. The state is affected by almost every act of 
our lives, immediately or remotely. Does this act 
of mine tend to a larger and truer democracy of 
equal privileges and rights, or away from it? Does 
it promote better citizenship by making it easier to 
do right and harder to do wrong? Does it protect 
from current perils and evils or open doors to these? 

VI. The church is always helped or hindered by 
every moral act of man. So I inquire with deepest 

[117] 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

concern as to the probable effect of my act upon 
the church of Christ. I am a part of the body of 
Christ* How will what I am doing influence the rest 
of his members when it becomes known? Will it pro- 
mote the development of love, hope, and faith in the 
organic church, or will it diminish these abiding forces? 

These tests are to be made before acting because 
they are a part of the act in present conditions of 
life. The effect of my act on all these fields of life is 
unavoidable. I must have it in view before conscience 
in the soul. If fairly met these tests will confirm 
the righteousness of what we have decided upon. 

A final test is the consensus of spiritual and ethical 
Christendom upon the act. There is a place for 
this consensus or general conviction and practice 
of Christian people in our study and decisions. 
What other good people have considered right is 
entitled to the profound respect of a thoughtful 
person. We must presume that God's spirit is also 
given to them and is guiding them so far as they 
are able to understand him or will yield to him. 
Spurgeon's wise remark is always to be remembered 
here: '^I cannot understand the attitude of a Chris- 
tian man who himself claims to be led by the Spirit 
of God, but pays no heed to the Spirit's leading of 
other good Christians." 

Let us thoroughly consider this consensus of 

Christian conviction upon any proposed course of 

action. As a good rule when in doubt about the 

biblical righteousness of a different decision, we do 

[118] 



JUDGMENTS OF CONSCIENCE 

well to follow other sincere and earnest Christians; 
but this should never be done as against clear new 
light given to our own soul which is an advance 
upon the past. The courageous pioneer is always 
needed in the realm of righteous living. He must 
have a fearless break with the past. And he must 
offend even the best people for a time, as Jesus did 
the very rehgious classes of his day. "There is much 
light yet to break forth from the sacred Scriptures" 
upon the perplexing problems of daily activities. 
Every man must keep soul windows open to this 
new light and obey it even to martyrdom. 

For, after all tests, the individual conscience is 
the supreme court on earth for each man. He may 
be wrong in his decisions, probably often is on the 
more perplexing questions of hfe, but his conscience, 
enlightened by his study of the Scriptures and his 
understanding of the Spirit's guidance, is to be 
followed unflinchingly and invariably through life. 
Such a man was Wendell PhiUips, of whom it is 
said, "The charms of home, the enjoyment of wealth 
and learning, the kindly recognition of his fellow 
citizens, were by him accounted naught compared 
with duty." ^ Phillips was a heroic pioneer in many 
of the great ethical movements of the century, 
following his conscience with the devotion of the 
early Christian mart)^: and with the same faith in 
the ultimate triumph of every righteous cause. 

^ Inscription on his home. Sticcess, February, 191 1. 



119 



X 

THE CONSERVATION OF SELF 

r'riHE duties comprised in rightful self-suste- 

I nance and self-development will be analyzed 
in three groups, but it is very clear that all 
moral laws for the self-life must have most careful 
discrimination and application; for here the lines 
between the good and evil are peculiarly indistinct 
and subtle. Evil so often is the good run to ex- 
tremes or the good unguarded. 

For instance, how dim are the lines: 

Between self-love which is essential to best living, 
and that selfishness which is evil. 

Between self-confidence or the self-respect which 
is fundamental to personal power for good, and 
self-conceit. 

Between proper sustenance of self, and self- 
indulgence. 

Between pleasure in eating which is valuable to 
the assimilation of food, and gluttony. 

Between desire for personal attractiveness or 
beauty, — a God-given instinct, — and pure vanity. 

Between desire for places of power to do good, 
and lust for official position for its own sake or to 
become simply conspicuous. 
[120] 



THE CONSERVATION OF SELF 

Between laudable aspirations and sinful ambitions. 

The difficulty in distinguishing lies, not at extremes 
of these contrasts, but just where they seem to coa- 
lesce, to know just where the line should be drawn 
between the good and the evil. It is often plain to 
observers that one has crossed into the evil, but not 
to one's own conscience. 

The peril is, on the good side, that men, fearing 
to run into the evil, will not enthusiastically prose- 
cute the necessary good thing; that, fearing to overdo, 
they will do too little, and thus they will be forever 
a timid and negative character. There are morbidly 
conscientious people so fearful of doing wrong that 
they never very zealously or forcibly do the good 
they ought to do. They are good, shrinkingly, 
fearfully good for nothing that is aggressive or power- 
ful for self or others. And it is in self-development, 
up to the allowable line, that this dread of doing 
something wrong, which leads to doing so little 
good, is most repressive. There is danger always, 
to be sure, of going over the line, but far better come 
up to it with all the aroused energies of the nature, 
even if the momentum drives a little over it, than to 
halt and shiver so far away from the line as to for- 
feit all conquering power. It will be easy to retreat 
to the right if the going too far was caused by sincere 
earnestness to do good. 

In a striking picture Satan is represented as hold- 
ing a man with all his might on the side of evil. 
The man is struggling to get to the line of right- 
[1211 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

eousness and is steadily gaining on Satan. Now he 
is near the line and makes a last desperate effort. 
Satan, realizing that he is being defeated, gives him 
one powerful push over the line, saying, "I would 
just as soon have you too far on that side." 

The Christian life of power is really determined 
by a keenly conscientious vision of the narrow Hne 
between the most aggressive good and the first 
approach of evil. Truly the way of Christ is narrow 
and his paths straight. The negative life is never 
approved by Christ. In his eyes it is sinful to hide 
the talent in a napkin lest some wrong use be made 
of it; it is sinful not to do with our might what our 
hands find to do. 

With these general principles in mind we now 
study the three groups of self-developing duties: 

First group, the activities which initiate habits of 
self-sustenance and incidental growth. 

Second group, activities which begin courses of 
conscious self-development to power, to coordina- 
tion, and to beauty as the perfection of these powers. 

Third group, activities which lead to pleasure and 
enthusiasm to attain the richest results. 

I. The first group of duties for the conservation 
of self relates to simple sustenance of life in all its 
aspects. This includes necessary eating, rest, sleep, 
and all other things which make for the preservation 
of health and physical Hfe. In his relations with 
the other man who is also engaged in self-cultivation, 
the good man obeys the law, ^'Thou shalt love 
[122] 



THE CONSERVATION OF SELF 

thy neighbor as thyself," by being in every way 
perfectly harmless to him. He will not encroach a 
hair's breadth on the rights of anyone else. Herbert 
Spencer's formula of justice ^ is thoroughly dis- 
criminating as affecting the other man: "Every 
man is free to do that which he wills, provided he 
infringes not on the equal freedom of any other 
man." Under this formula he emmierates the rights 
of every individual to physical integrity, to the uses 
of natural media like Hght and air and land, and 
certain other specific rights such as the right to 
property, material and incorporeal; to gifts and 
bequests; to free exchange and free contract; to free 
industry; to free beHef and worship; to free speech 
and pubHcation. But Spencer's formula of indi- 
vidual freedom rightly does not restrict to doing no 
harm to self in the larger and higher sense. Self 
also has rights as against a man's fooHsh indulgence 
and excesses, even if it could be shown that these 
are harmless to other men. Since all life runs into 
habits, the Christian man will early form right habits 
of eating. He will eat to live, not Uve to eat. Every 
man has his peculiarities of digestion and assimila- 
tion, and he will seek to know these thoroughly and 
learn just what food and what quantity of food will 
best minister to his physical vitality, and at what 
hours this should be taken. He will make a rehgion 
of his eating and regard it a grievous sin to injure 
his wonderful body for the mere pleasure of appetite. 
* Spencer, "Principles of Ethics," Vol. II, p. 46. 
[123] 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

Everything cries out to us that we must renounce! 

Thou must go without, go without! 
This is the song every hour sings to us hoarsely, 

Die and come to Hfe.^ 

Here many good men transgress, and at cost of an 
early decline of power and the shortening of Hfe at 
the end where it should have the culmination of 
effectiveness. 

But what can be done for such people whom 
dyspepsia does not bring to terms, nor gout be able to 
discipline? What can be said to show them the awful 
waste of magnificent possibilities on sinful dinner 
tables? In drink, of course, the Scripture rule is total 
abstinence from all that is harmful at all and strict 
moderation in what is pure and wholesome. It is 
unnecessary here, surely, to recount the steps of aban- 
donment of intoxicating hquors by good people indi- 
vidually, socially, and now almost wholly medicinally. 

The man who desires to make the most of his life will 
carefully follow all the remarkable experiments at bet- 
ter eating, like Fletcherism, vegetarianism, and so on, 
distinguishing between wisdom and passing fads. 

There is much growth that is spontaneous and 
incidental in hours of sleep and recuperation. It is 
our duty to secure the best conditions for growth by 
judicious habits in all the lowest rounds of life. 

II. The second group of duties for the conservation 
of self is made up of activities which begin consciously 
— courses of self-development. This is not the place, 

1 Goethe. 
[ 124 ] 



THE CONSERVATION OF SELF 

however, to discuss systems of physical culture, of 
intellectual broadening and of memory enriching, of 
social powers, moral, intellectual, emotional, and spir- 
itual growth by training and exercise. The Scripture 
duty is clear that every man must strenuously and 
always conserve and use every power of his nature as 
a distinct talent for which he must give account. 

Man is often unconscious of the niunber and qual- 
ity of his talents. Many a man hides five talents and 
thinks he is faihng to use only one. ^^Mute inglorious 
Miltons" there are who grow to middle hfe before they 
or anyone else discovers they can follow and express 
God's lofty thoughts. General Grant tanned leather 
very poorly without knowing that he could handle a 
milHon men superbly and make of them an overwhelm- 
ing fighting machine. Here is where the church owes 
its highest duty to young men and women and has its 
greatest opportunity. It must have such broad and 
varied activities in its programme that the possibili- 
ties of its younger people will be discovered for them- 
selves and to others. Unworked gold and diamond 
mines are in our churches because no one is prospect- 
ing for them. Opportunities offered for specific work 
are the touchstone that locates the treasured talents. 
Open doors to special usefulness given by the church 
are also open doors to see splendid souls.^ 

1 "The standard of morality is primarily an end not a law. The 
end is an ideal of self." — MmRHEAD, "Ethics," p. 151. 

"Love does not aim simply at the conscious good of the beloved 
object, it is not satisfied without perfect loyalty of heart; it aims 
at its own completeness." — George Eliot, "Romola." 
[125] 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

Let us consider a few specifications in this vital 
matter. 

What shall be the reading of the Christian man 
in these days? Assuming that he has had a fairly 
good schooling and has become a lover of books, or 
desires to be, what shall he select? There is the daily 
paper which he must read, but unless he wants to 
read nothing else, he must learn to read it not a 
minute beyond its real profit to him. Because the 
daily paper is a recreation and a dissipation, all the 
reading time of many Christians goes to it. ^ 

There is therefore need of unremitting effort to get 
to books — books bought, books from the library, 
books borrowed from friends. He should fill his 
living room with them and have all the best con- 
stantly in his way — on his desk, on the tables, 
dressing bureau, everywhere. He should start con- 
versation about books with good readers, read book 
reviews, go into old book stores, into the best new 
book stores. There are the new worlds where every 
man can be his own Columbus. It was a little flock 
of birds that led Christopher Columbus away from 
richest America to the small islands of the Antilles. 
So the unclean birds of unsavory novels lead many 
a man into swamps among reptiles of the tropics. 
In boyhood an old friend of the author read a 
sentence, and for sixty years has fought the vile 
suggestions of that sentence. 

Books often make great men, and they make char- 
acter in all men. The lover of good books has the 
[126 1 



THE CONSERVATION OF SELF 

closest company of great men and lives in a paradise 
all his own. "A wonderful thing is a book," says 
Carlyle, "perhaps take it all in all the most wonder- 
ful thing in human civiKzation, the most powerful 
thing." 

The old Christian rule of having week-day books 
and Sunday books is well worth while. The Sunday 
as a day of heaven and eternity come into Hfe, one in 
every seven, is its sujficient defense, as Prof. Taylor 
Lewis argued. We cannot make Sunday a rest day 
by vacancy of mind and lounging body, we must 
make it more than cessation of daily work by filKng 
it with Christly service and worship. Hence the 
Sunday newspaper is the greater wrong to its readers 
than to its makers, great as that wrong is. It is idle 
to discuss whether it was made and printed on Sun- 
day; the wrong is that it is to be read on Sunday. 
He is a fool whether he is a sinner or not. He is 
opening the door into what might be heaven and 
eternal things of power and joy and letting in the 
stench, the little things, the daily struggle and stress. 
These flood him when he needs rest from these and 
life in the altitudes with God. 

He ought to read books on Sunday that are worthy 
of the day made for God's man, — the great classics 
on the Christian life of service and the inner life of 
communion with God. He needs books that will 
make his Christian life great and rich and exhila- 
rating; old books that will come with the touch of 
the hands of the Christ and his blessing to a man. 
[127 1 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

Carlyle says, "All that mankind has done, thought, 
or been is lying in magic presentation in the pages 
of books." 

Reading of books should aim for definite results. 
The question to ask is not only what is a man read- 
ing, but what is he reading for? There is a place, 
properly, for entertaining and humorous reading, and 
to a tired mind this is a considerable place, but read- 
ing is too mighty in possibility of power for a man 
to give to fun most of the time devoted to it. That 
would be like making his principal meal every day 
three courses of dessert and one of strong food, or 
having recess at school for five hours and study for 
one hour. The results aimed at should be enriching 
knowledge on many subjects and culture of mental 
powers always. It is a fine thing for a business man 
or a professional man to adopt a specialty to study, 
like some particular science or some literary art or 
historical subject. Following a specialty gives the 
enthusiasm so much needed in book study. It gives, 
too, the sense of doing something thoroughly which 
in these days of high standards of efficiency in 
business is necessary to the earnest man's real 
satisfaction. 

Religious books the Christian needs to select with 
equal care. There is such a wealth of marvelously 
interesting, soul-stirring books of biography, doc- 
trinal and ethical discussion, moral and social reform, 
missionary movements. Christian progress, and Bib- 
lical helps that every man should get the best. The 
[128] 



THE CONSERVATION OF SELF 

tired man must fly from dullness in religious books 
as he would from half-cooked meals. Consult reviews 
for the best, and talk with bookmen who know their 
business. 

Conversational power should be cultivated by every 
Christian. For the joy there is in it, the great use- 
fulness in it, and the reflex mental culture which 
only expression can give, learn to talk well, learn how 
to listen to inspire others to talk well, and to guide 
social intercourse. This social and intellectual devel- 
opment is of the richest character, and it is all the 
more important because so many are indifferent 
to it. 

The cultivation of personal powers for an enriched 
and influential individuality very clearly should 
have in view their coordination in order to the 
completeness of the whole nature of man. Culture 
which is so intellectual that it utterly ignores the 
need for social development does this at the expense 
of the intellectual development itself; culture of the 
reasoning faculties which neglects the esthetic and 
the emotional becomes unbalanced reasoning power, 
and its influence upon others is ineffective; the mor- 
alist who rejects religion and the Christian man who 
does not cultivate keen conscientiousness are both 
lopsided. Man has a seven-sided nature and the 
sides overlap in such a way that the largest Hfe of 
any part is possible only when all is at its best. It is 
the whole man who thinks or feels or acts or wor- 
ships. There is therefore imperative need of full- 
[129 1 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

rounded, full-orbed manhood, and never was this 
need greater than in this day when so many bulge 
at certain sides and are concave at others. 

The highest touch of life is attractiveness or living 
beauty. Real beauty is not something tacked on 
or painted on; it is the expression of the perfection 
of any nature. Piety becomes the beauty of holiness 
when it is Christlikeness. Intellectual powers become 
charming at their best, and social powers fascinating, 
and art a thrilling pleasure. Beauty is a by-product, 
as joy so often is, and both come as a reward for 
seeking perfection and largest life. We may use 
beauty, therefore, as a test of how far we have 
progressed in our self-development. When our work 
becomes really attractive to others, when the glorious 
touch of beauty is upon it, we may take encourage- 
ment. First, power in all self -culture; then coordi- 
nation; then beauty.^ Plato says, "That education 
is the best which gives to the body and to the 
soul all the beauty and all the perfection of which 
they are capable." Charles Eliot Norton says, 
"Beauty has played an immense part in the devel- 
opment of the highest qualities in human beings." 
And Oliver S. Marden, "A taste for the beautiful 
will not only increase one's capacity for happiness, 
but also one's efficiency." Jacob Riis, that lover of 
the poorest poor, reminds us of what every worker 

1 It is well known that the Greek word for beauty (kalon) was 
used both for beauty and for goodness. The Stoic maxim was 
"Only the beautiful is good." Christians may say, "The really 
good is beautiful." 

[130] 



THE CONSERVATION OF SELF 

among them knows, ''The physical hunger of the 
poor is not half so bitter as their starving for the 
beautiful. All children love beauty and beautiful 
things." 

III. The third group of duties for the conserva- 
tion of self may properly lead to pleasure. The old 
morahsts talked much of happiness as the chief end 
of Hfe. The heaven of the old preachers was wholly 
happiness. We have gone too far to the other ex- 
treme of bald utihty in rebound from this teaching 
and have almost put heaven out of practical thinking 
and motives of life. Let us now remember that Christ 
talked very much of joy, of his own joy which he 
desired to give to his disciples. The angels said to 
the shepherds that Christ's coming would be tidings 
of great joy to all people. 

How shall we think rightly of joy and pleasure? 
Shall we see that it means the perfect working of 
the human machine? Shall we understand that it is 
joy to eat, to think, to decide, to act, to prosecute 
all the things of Ufe when we Hve aright, doing God's 
will? Joy is the immediate reward of Christly living 
to the good man himself just as beauty is the appear- 
ance of his life to others. The monkish idea was 
that it is sinful to enjoy joy when it comes from 
righteous living. The Bible idea is that joy is 
strengthening and further develops power — "the 
joy of the Lord is your strength." Abiding in Christ, 
bearing fruit as the branch in him, being pruned for 
richer fruitage, this brings the joy of Jesus and makes 
[131] 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

that joy full. So again joy becomes a test of one's 
progress. When Christian duty becomes a pleasure, 
and Christian worship a delight to the soul, and 
all Christian work exhilarating, we have made some 
progress indeed. 



[132 



XI 

REALIZING THE CHRISTIAN HOME 

THE modern Christian man, with a few noble 
exceptions, does not seem to have measured 
the real significance of home. His meager 
sense of parental opportunity is amazing. Because 
he is keen to see every business advantage, alert for 
every chance to win friends for trade or his profes- 
sion, and wide awake to the latest and best efficiency 
in daily work, his neglect of his children — immeas- 
urably his greatest asset — is all the more idiotic. 

The first great parent was Abraham. His responsi- 
bility was for the care of all the nature of his son, 
Isaac. He was the physical provider, — which is 
all some men are who regard themselves as duti- 
ful parents, — he was also the teacher, the sole 
teacher of his son; he was the only physician the boy 
had, probably, and his only social companion and 
moral guide, and he was also the religious head of 
his home. When Moses in the Decalogue set forth 
the duty of children to honor their father and mother, 
the father's function embraced all that Abraham was 
to Isaac — provider, teacher, physician, companion, 
moral guide, and priest in the household. 
[133] 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

The father is yet to the child the representative 
of the authority of God as the fifth commandment 
has enjoined it. The fifth commandment is properly 
in the first table of the law — one of the duties to 
God, the duty to God's representatives in authority, 
the father and the mother. The fatherhood of the 
day of Moses made this a self-evident proposition. 

The father's responsibility is in no particular less 
to-day. The difference is chiefly that now he has 
trained speciaHsts to assist him at every point, but 
they are essentially his personally selected assistants, 
and the father's responsibility remains for all that 
concerns the welfare of his child. He must assume 
responsibility for the kind of physician attending his 
child in sickness and for the kind of teacher he has 
in the public school or in private schools. He should 
ever be the closest comrade of his boy, the best friend 
his daughter knows. If he is not he will suffer in the 
evening of his Kfe the alienation of his children, — 
the fatal effect of the lack of such parental fellowship. 
He must train them in all virtue and noble habits, 
remembering that the first rehgious center was the 
home, not a church, and the first religious minister 
was the father. 

The matter of parental authority is vital, not the 
joke some newspapers and novelists make it. In 
the present transition from the harsh and unbending 
parenthood of some of the fathers, who, wielding 
authority like a tyrant, to the suasion of wiser train- 
ing in love, there is in many cases neither authority 
[134 1 



THE CHRISTIAN HOME 

exercised nor good training yet begun. We are in 
chaotic interregnum in the family condition. 

What is the Christian view of parental authority? 
Surely it is to be a real authority of the father and 
mother to rule the house. It is idle to speak of their 
responsibility for the home if they are not to be given 
power and right to govern. But all Christian gov- 
ernment in the home or school or state is a govern- 
ment of righteous law. It may not be arbitrary 
or whimsical or tyrannical in methods. The child 
has many imquestionable rights to the best oppor- 
tunities for happiness, training, and love in the home. 
That children have rights was, a few years ago, to 
some fathers, a new and startling subject, but it is 
now a commonplace of moral discussion. Govern- 
ment in the Christian sense is the conservation of 
the rights of all the governed. Rules and regula- 
tions in the home should be self-evidently right and 
for the good of all. Authority is complete in the 
infancy of the son or daughter, and is gradually 
lessened during the years of growth, until at major- 
ity it ends. The wise parent so graduates it and so 
develops self-control in the child. 

What will happen when the sensible father will 
so adjust business and the mother social demands 
to meet their sacred opportunity as parents? Their 
home from the beginning of married Hfe would be 
the perfection of joy, their children would have 
their spiritual Hfe awakened in earliest consciousness 
and would develop uninterruptedly in every virtue, 
[135] 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

grace, and intellectual accomplishment. They would 
become the deepest satisfaction of the parents' 
hearts in mature life and their guardians and exceed- 
ing great joy in old age. Business success of any 
kind, social conquests as society queens, are small and 
mean without a child's love and respect, and bitter at 
the price of children ruined or dwarfed. The fiend- 
ish practice of vagabond beggars of crippling their 
children has its counterpart in practices of our first 
citizens which cripple and dwarf the soul and char- 
acter of their children. The children are neglected 
or turned over to the ignorance or blundering of 
nurses and servants, while father is becoming a 
millionaire and mother a leader at balls and theater 
parties, from which she returns long after midnight, 
only to sleep nearly all next day, or, if she rises early, 
to be irritable, unreasonable, and full of foolish whims. 
God forgive them! they know not what they do! 

How, then, shall the good man regard his home? 
First of all, as the training center for his children's 
lives. All else must be subordinate to this. Or, 
rather, the home must be made for the children the 
incomparable glory of a successful fatherhood and 
motherhood. The home must be homelike to the 
child, a free, happy atmosphere for him. It may 
be the place to which the boy or girl will run in 
preference to any street corner or other resort. 

Is this easy to accomplish? The most thoughtful 
and devoted Christian parents have not found it so 
in these days. It will require constant planning of 
[136] 



THE CHRISTIAN HOME 

plays and amusements for the children by these 
parents; a liberal supply of children's books and 
periodicals, now so numerous; a judicious hospital- 
ity to other children, and the absolute freedom of 
the house to the children under regulations of order 
and discipline that will of themselves develop char- 
acter. There is no business so complicated and full 
of problems as the training of children. Some of 
that deeply serious thinking given to children's needs 
which the father gives to business problems will 
solve these home problems. A study of child nature 
and some knowledge of best methods of training are 
necessary. This requires time, but there is no sub- 
stitute for that genuine sympathy with the child 
which is only thus acquired. The father who comes so 
close to his child saves him and saves himself as well. 
Henry Drummond's ^ thought of the ethical value 
of the family is sublime. The mother gives love, the 
father righteousness. The chapter on the "Evolu- 
tion of the Father" is a fine piece of scientific think- 
ing in Drummond's finest literary style; it is excelled 
only by the chapter on the "Evolution of the 
Mother," which is exquisite in expression, warmth 
of feeling, and rich suggestiveness. He shows how 
deep love between the father and the mother, hus- 
band and wife, comes through the child. But how 
sad for the children, even more than for the hus- 
band and wife, when "Betsey and I Are Out"! It 
is so in some so-called Christian homes. 

1 Drummond, "The Ascent of Man," p. 310 et seq. 
[137 1 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

There was a stock of temper we both had for a start, 
Although we ne'er suspected 'twould take us two apart; 
I had my various failings, bred in the flesh and bone, 
And Betsy, like all good women, had a temper of her own; 
So I've talked with Betsy and Betsy has talked with me, 
And we agreed together that we can never agree; 
But when she dies, I wish she would be laid by me. 
And lyin' together in silence, perhaps we will then agree.* 

Home, too, is the place of the larger life for all. 

Daily business has its narrow and narrowing limits; 

the profession, whatever it is, its monotony of 

drudgery; the school, its hard lessons; but home is 

the life boundless in its reach. In the home the rich 

literature of the ages may gather to us the great and 

the good of all time; the larger interests of humanity 

may be studied in books and around the hospitable 

board when wisely the door stands open to the best 

men and women; the love of all for each other, their 

faith in each other and profound mutual respect, and 

the joyous fellowship of closest hearts will bring out 

the best in everyone in the home and make it the realm 

of sweetest joy and friendships warmer than blood. 

Domestic happiness, thou only bliss 
Of Paradise that has survived the fall! 
Thou art the nurse of virtue; in thine arms 
She smiles, appearing as in truth she is. 
Heaven-born, and destined to the skies again. 
Thou art not known, where pleasure is adored, — 
That reeling goddess . . . 

For thou art meek and constant, hating change, 
And finding in the calm of truth-tried love, 
Joys which her stormy rapture never yields. 



1 Will Carleton, Poems, "Betsy and I Are Out." 
[138 1 



THE CHRISTIAN HOME 

But Discipline at length, 

O'erlooked and unemployed, grew sick and died, 

Then study languished, emulation slept, 

And virtue fled.^ 

The home which is the place of the larger life is 
not an accident. It is the result of plans and en- 
deavors and consecrated parental wisdom and love. 
Such a home costs much, and those unwilling to pay 
the absolute, undiscountable cost will never have it. 
The price to be paid is not so much in money as in 
time and devotion. But there is no risk as to returns 
of home investment. Profits are sure. 

When such investment of time and devotion is 
made in the home, it will become the place of rest 
and recuperation for life's outer work. 

Rest comes most surely when a man turns with 
enthusiasm to the higher Hfe. The lounging attempts 
of an active mind to do nothing and think nothing 
during waking hours is a failure. And the greater 
the exhaustion, which does not lead to sleep, the more 
terribly do the nerves and brain keep cantering 
around the pole they have been tied to all day. The 
wise man leaves the thoughts of the day and thinks 
of God and his world of grandest ideals for man. 
In the refreshing breezes of such spiritual and intel- 
lectual excursions his fevered nerves become steady, 
strong; they become exhilarated with renewed life. 
Then the man is surprised to note how much of his 
nature has been unemployed in the excessive use of 

iCowper, "The Task." 
[ 139 1 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

brains, nerves, and muscles on a specific daily work, 
and that this spiritual, larger nature does not draw 
upon the same energies, but seems to furnish its own 
resources, which overflow to the wonderful recupera- 
tion of the whole man. 

This is for the waking hours at home. Of course 
there is need of sufficient sleep, according in length 
to the temperament of the individual. But how 
get this sleep in most reinvigorating sweetness? By 
this same complete switching off to the larger life. 
To prove the truth of these statements we appeal 
to the experience of earnest workers in the church 
and in philanthropy who, after a strenuous day's 
work or a hard week's work at business or in the 
professions, give themselves enthusiastically in the 
home and church to Christ's service. One such man 
told of his Sunday headache disappearing in church 
and Sunday-school work. To the exhausted man 
who for years has only lounged at home this may 
seem an absurd philosophy, but surely his method 
of resting has not brought good results as he drags 
himself back to work, and the earnest Christian's 
method has been effective every time. Great mer- 
chants have kept young into fourscore years as they 
rested from business by doing Christian work, and 
manual laborers have returned to work with new 
efficiency. Let all men try it practically; they should 
not reason foolishly against it. 

Home ought to be the shrine of more than kinship 
relations. There may be friendships of the tenderest 
[ 140] 



THE CHRISTIAN HOME 

intimacies and profoundest regard. There must be 
such friendship and true comradeship between hus- 
band and wife or they lose the supreme value of 
the marriage union of two lives. As Dr. H. Clay 
Trumbull argues/' Friendship is the master passion " ^ ; 
even conjugal love must have friendship added to 
remain pure and ennobling. And between children 
and parents, brothers and sisters, there may be such 
friendships which are spiritual kinships beside which 
blood relationships are feeble and fleeting. 

It may be that in the wise beginnings of the home 
lie the foundations of the house of happiness it may 
become. There is the promise of fewer divorces, and 
still more a pledge of truly good homes. The latest 
movements of home reformers are concentrating upon 
better beginnings of all homes instead of upon the 
wrecks of some of them. A scientific study of the 
best conditions for happy marriage, age, tempera- 
ment, preparation; how to produce the social condi- 
tions that will promote sufficient knowledge of each 
other in prospective marriages; how parents can assist 
and not vex into desperation; in short, of all the 
profound questions of married life, will be preventa- 
tive rather than so costly curative. A literature upon 
these subjects is being created, some of it very good 
and much of it harmful as yet to the immature chil- 
dren to whom it is undiscriminatingly recommended 
by people who have had no children nor have tried 
it wisely upon any children. 

1 See Dr. TrumbuU's book with this title.. 
[141] 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

Love stories we will always have with us, and who 
does not enjoy them if they are pure and sweet? 
Pity the mortal who does not! But in addition to 
sweet and pure love stories there is need of booklets 
and tracts for young people before and after marriage, 
such as were once more current than they are to-day. 
They should be adapted to modern times. They 
should clearly and entertainingly set forth home 
duties and opportunities. Conjugal love will last all 
the better if reenforced by conscientious regard for 
mutual duties and rights. These duties and rights 
are not so self-evident to all as it might appear. 
The husband must provide generously for all the 
needs of the wife, personal as well as for housekeeping, 
that she may not live in pinching want of money 
for her own needs as did one good wife all her days. 
Her husband had plenty, but he gave to her so 
stingily and made her account for every dollar so sys- 
tematically that she nervously dreaded the necessary 
request for a Httle money because of the recurring 
inquisition as to the use made of the last small remit- 
tance. How astonishing was this in a really well-to-do 
home! The wife should be the business partner, 
economically and wisely managing home expenses, 
first. Home management is a mutual right and 
duty. Husband and wife are equal partners in his 
income and in her expenditures. Both need to 
remember always 

"There are no rights without duties, 
No duties without corresponding rights." 
[142] 



THE CHRISTIAN HOME 

When marriage is begun and continued in mutual 
regard and Christian love, there is no divorce at the 
end and no heartburnings on the way. 

Home gives the opportunity for hospitality, that 
Christian grace and duty of richest reward, if done 
without grudging and with wise planning. The 
humblest home may share its table even if it has 
no spare room. There is profound wisdom in the 
scriptural injunction to observe hospitality without 
grudging. When children come in contact around 
the table with wisely selected men and women, 
they will have an opportunity for broad culture 
mentally, socially, and morally which is not to be ob- 
tained in any other way. Then gracious friendships 
are formed through hospitahty which bless all the 
life. The Christian custom of former years of fre- 
quently inviting ministers, teachers, physicians, and 
leaders in society to one's hospitable board was 
repaid a thousandfold in the children's lives. Many 
a man traces the start of a great life to contact with 
a fine character at his father's table. It is an irrepar- 
able, absolutely irreparable, loss and monstrous wrong 
to our children that has permitted the abandonment of 
hospitality to good men and substituted the social dis- 
sipations of the dinner at midnight, from which chil- 
dren are wisely excluded. Surely some parents can be 
persuaded to restore this right of their children to 
meet in hospitality men and women who would bless 
and ennoble their lives. It has been restored to many 
homes by the earnest efforts of far-seeing pastors. 
[ 143 ] 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

Love is the paramount Christian duty in the home. 
Christian love reserves its best to give at home. 
Often the business man who is suave and obHging 
all day, even though his patience is sorely tried by 
exasperating vexations, is tempted to let loose the 
vials of his wrath when he gets home, where he 
thinks no business interests can suffer. But Chris- 
tian love forbids this. In many a home the poor 
tired wife and mother has been all day long just 
as sorely tried as he. The man who gives way to 
the temptation only puts the bitterness into his own 
cup and thorns into his own pillow at home. Yet, 
he asks, what is home for if not to relax? He 
thinks his temper will be the better for the explosion 
and relief, but will it not really be worse to-morrow 
because he has thus cultivated it all the more? 
And how long will the sweet temper of wife and 
children last in such an atmosphere? 

The Christian home is the product of Christ's 
coming into the world. There is nothing finer, 
nothing more enjoyable, nothing more important to 
the progress of mankind. Let it be reHgious above 
all, with Christ himself as the head of the house. It 
is the home, not the individual, which is the unit of 
civilization and which measures what it shall be. 
Then will there be love like that of purest souls 
in oneness — love like that of which Elizabeth 
Barrett Browning wrote to her husband, Robert 
Browning: 

[ 144 ] 



THE CHRISTIAN HOME 

How do I love thee? let me count the ways. 

I love thee to the depth and breadth and height 

My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight 

For the ends of Being and ideal Grace. 

I love thee to the level of every day's 

Most quiet need, by sun and candlelight, 

I love thee freely, as men strive for Right; 

I love thee purely, as men turn from Praise. 

I love thee with the passion put to use 

In my old griefs, and with my childhood's faith. 



145] 



XII 
THE ETHICS OF SOCIAL LIFE 

CHRISTIAN society is based upon noble 
friendship, good character, and intellectual 
affinity. It is the extended and more flexi- 
ble home life where deeper tides than blood are 
flowing. In the country village or small town it is 
usually a neighborhood realm, but in the large city 
it cannot have geographic bounds. In its best form 
it is the thoroughly organized church with broad 
activities radiating from a powerful spiritual center. 
Outside of the church society is best when inspired 
by some common benevolent, scientific, educational, 
or moral reform purpose. Fellowship in good work 
is the most satisfying to noble souls, and it is closer 
than fellowship of creed, or pleasure, or common 
profit. "There are two kinds of altruism: justice, 
and beneficence. Positive beneficence puts necessary 
restraints upon an individual's undeserved results 
of labor, displays of abihty, blame, and praise. It 
regards duties to the sick and injured, the ill-used 
and endangered, gives pecuniary aid to relatives and 
friends and to the poor.'' ^ 

^Herbert Spencer, "Ethics," Vol. II, p. 270. 
[146] 



ETHICS OF THE SOCIAL LIFE 

But society, also, may rightly be for purely social 
pleasure. Man's social nature seeks expression be- 
yond the home circle and loves companionship of 
men and women. The growth of lodges, leagues, 
societies, and associations of all kinds in civilized 
nations is stupendous. This is the expression of 
general brotherliness inspired by Christ's teachings. 
When innocently developed such organizations still 
further extend the brotherhood of man. 

In simple social circles the duties are to regard each 
other's rights; to be truly brotherly in attitude, 
speech, and conduct, and to use the opportunity of 
these associations to do all the good possible to every 
member. 

On what is the society of the "four hundred" 
based? Purely, in last analysis, on money. Wealth 
admits to it, lack of wealth excludes. No matter 
how the money was acquired, no questions are asked 
so long as the possessor can keep out of jail. There 
is no pretense of real affection or warm friendships, 
though these exist between some individuals of the 
set in spite of all that is against sincere heart-throbs 
in such an atmosphere. But no one claims that 
affection or mutual regard is necessary to ''society." 
Nor is there a moral standard, for divorcees and rakes 
of imsavory name are prominent in such society, and 
men of dishonest business are there. 

But this is not civiHzed society after the Christian 
standard; it is heathenish, though it owes its oppor- 
tunity to have wealth to Christian law; it is shameful 
[147] 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

in all eyes but its own, which are brazen, and its 
influence on every effort to make the world better is 
demoralizing. It deserves and it is getting the con- 
tempt of good men and women who have wealth but 
who have also decency and good character. In a 
republic like America the society of the "four hun- 
dred" is a monstrous anachronism. It is a reversion 
to feudalism, but without the knighthood or the 
womanhood of feudalism. It is a reversion farther 
back to the worst days of Pompeii and Corinth. 

The duty of Christians to the conventional cus- 
toms and manners of polite society is worth consid- 
ering. When these conventional manners have the 
authority of good reason and long standing no Chris- 
tian will be indifferent to them. He will seek to 
become acquainted with the usages of good society 
and conform to them. As a rule there are good 
morals in good manners. But "forms of society are 
never exhaustive expressions of duty, only general 
outlines. Hence th'fey always need to be supple- 
mented by the free moral spirit." ^ And when these 
forms or fashions are the whimsical creations of mere 
commercialism or flimkeyism they are to be followed 
simply as they conform to good taste or comfort. 
However, all good fashions change with the progress 
of the world, and John Wesley's rule is sensible, 
"Be not the first to adopt the new, nor the last to 
abandon the old." 

Society is of transcendent value because of the 

^Bowne, "Principles of Ethics," p. 145. 
[148] 



ETHICS OF THE SOCIAL LIFE 

friendship it renders possible. The man who has 
not formed a Jonathan and David friendship with 
some other man has lost life's best joy and inspiration. 
The love of man for man was the romantic love of 
the ancient Greek stories, and a revival of it in novels 
of to-day would make excellent companion tales to 
Damon and Pythias, Socrates and Plato. A good 
man calls out the richest in his friend and in turn 
finds his own soul surpassingly enriched. Friend- 
ship may embrace a group of men and women Hke 
that which gathered around Dr. Samuel Johnson 
and around Martin Luther to hear their remarkable 
table talks, or in the intellectual French salon, with 
its brilHant wit and wisdom and its many splendid 
characters. There are affinities esthetic, spiritual, 
and philanthropic as well as intellectual. 

But there are men and women whose lives are 
merely a round of social excesses, who have no 
worthier purpose than to shine in cheap wit, in the 
despicable hypocrisies and Hes of fashionable cHques 
and sets. We cannot but think of the shocking 
waste of money by these people, money with wonder- 
ful possibilities of power for good in our day, but 
we do not always stop to think that even worse is 
the awful waste of manhood and womanhood which, 
under other training, might have become ideal for 
righteousness, grace, and world-wide helpfulness. 

Social life is simpler among working people, friend- 
ships deep and lasting, and fellowships in the "long 
evenings of civilization" helpful and satisfying. 
[ 149 ] 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

The church should ever be planning to enrich life 
by more and more social gatherings to promote these 
ends for all the people. 

So there may be friendships formed in college, 
friendships formed on the long journeys now so com- 
mon among men, friendships made in the special 
stress and struggle of misfortune or suffering, — 
friendships which are the outcome of a score of 
experiences we may have in common with other men. 
Warm and emotionally cultivated friendships are 
the heart's need. The Occidental is cold in heart 
expression. The gain made by the inspiration of 
progress should not longer be offset in him by his 
loss of the oriental freedom of heart-to-heart mani- 
festation. 

To our charitable gifts to the poor and unfortunate 
should be added the touch of Christian social life. 
In the beautiful words of Lowell: 

The gift without the giver is bare; 

Who gives himself with his alms feeds three, 

Himself, his hungering neighbor, and Me! 

So the problems of the poor, who are yet with us 
after two thousand years of Christ's lessons of love 
and brotherhood, are solved by men going to them 
and not by merely money sent. The object love 
sets is the development of self-help, a permanent 
cure for poverty. John Wesley, who was a master 
hand at what Dr. Briggs calls "adopting the life 
of voluntary poverty," "the finest Christian act of 
any day," used to have a handful of English coins 
[150] 



ETHICS OF THE SOCIAL LIFE 

to give to the old people of his London chapel as he 
walked to the church door. This was the best that 
could be done in the almost hopeless industrial and 
social conditions of his day. Wesley was a won- 
der of generosity. Canon Farrar, in The Outlook, 
asks: ^* Which among his contemporaries equaled John 
Wesley in the versatility of his beneficences, in zeal 
of self-sacrifice, or in the luster of the example he 
has left to the world? Consider his supreme disin- 
terestedness, his unparalleled courage, his indefati- 
gable toils." But Wesley by personal association and 
marvelous evangelism lifted the poor to hope and 
better conditions. And this is now the charity of 
the good man who is wise. Of Charles Loring Brace 
of New York it is said that he was able to touch 
and improve three hundred thousand lives during 
his life.i This was largely through the Children's 
Aid Society. 

Ruskin says, "Rogues are truly manufactured 
articles." They are made by society forcing them 
into imwholesome surroundings, vice-breeding and 
criminal from childhood. Pity comes from piety 
etymologically, and sympathy, better than pity, 
comes from Christians giving themselves to the 
unfortunate. "What is the spirit of Christ? I will 
tell you: He came not to be ministered unto; not to 
see how much he could gather into his bosom out 
of the lives of others; not to be petted and dan- 
dled and lifted along and fed, all the way with no 

1 Richard T. Ely, "Socialism," p. 260. 
[151] 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

burden, no care, no work — not that. He came 
to minister." ^ 

"Abstract justice," Ruskin declares, "would solve 
the question of national wealth." And for full jus- 
tice to the working poor and to all the unfortunate 
and suffering, -the modern spirit of Christ strives. 
But meantime benevolence which is not pauperizing, 
but brotherly aid in emergency, is the only Christian 
course to pursue. 

Herbert Spencer strongly objects to organizations 
for charity with which all good people by personal 
work do not constantly and broadly cooperate — 
organizations which fall into the hands of officials 
who become either perfunctory or mere salary seekers. 
No one desires such constant personal reenforce- 
ment more than the sincere leaders in present-day, 
splendidly organized charities. 

Conditions of vice and immorality are yet fearful 
in our large cities and towns, and these must be 
resolutely improved by social uplift and by the 
aggressively higher standards of good society. The 
attitude of some Christian people to these evils is 
amazing. In Berlin, Germany, the law regulating 
the giving of licenses to prostitutes requires that 
licenses may be given only to those who have been 
confirmed in the church and have taken their first 
communion. 2 

^ C. H. Fowler, Sermons. 

' C. L. Brace, "Dangerous Classes," p. 128. 

[152] 



ETHICS OF THE SOCIAL LIFE 

Alas for the rarity 
Of Christian charity 

Under the sun! 
O it was pitiful, 
Near a whole city full, 

Home she had none! 

Christian benevolence sees in these lowliest and 
worst of human beings immeasurable possibilities. 
W. J. Dawson tells us: ''It is possible that the 
very mire of London streets contains radium, the 
most tremendous agent of Hght and heat yet dis- 
covered by man; so in man himself, however low 
his state, there is the spark of God. We forget 
this or make it a rhetorical expression, but Christ 
acted as though his boast of the immense value of 
man were true. He inwove his life into all that is 
commonest in life." And G. Campbell Morgan says: 
"Now Jesus faces the crowd. Sympathy! Why? 
Because he is right with God he is right with men. 
The settlement of every social problem will be found 
in the return of man to God. Then he gets back to 
men." 

Henry Drummond loved to point out that evolu- 
tion always meant two things, sustenance and 
reproduction, and that reproduction is the struggle 
of life for the Hfe of others. Every plant in the 
world lives for others. It sets aside something, 
costly, careful for the highest expression of its nature. 
The seed is the tithe of love which nature renders 
to man. It is Hfe. Literally, scientifically, love is 
life. Nearly all the beauty of the world is love- 
[153] 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

beauty — nearly all the music is love-music — nearly 
all the foods are love-foods, seeds, eggs, grains, and 
most fruits. The end of man is that which we had 
from the beginning that we love.^ 

The Duke of Argyle ^ calls altruism ^'the new and 
very affected name for the old familiar things we 
used to call charity, philanthropy, and love." Dar- 
win's law is: ''Those communities which included 
the greatest number of the most sympathetic members 
would flourish best." Prince Krapotkin ^ points out 
that there is a vast amount of cooperation in nature 
which we have overlooked in seeing the fierce struggle, 
as it seems, for existence. And Benjamin Kidd finds 
"a fund of altruistic feeling with which our civiliza- 
tion is equipped." 

"Whose names are these?" Whereon the angel 
Answered, "The names of those who love the Lord." 
"And is mine one?" said Abou. "Nay, not so!" 
Replied the angel. Abou spoke more low, 
But cheerily still, and said, "I pray thee, then, 
Write me as one that loves his fellow men." 



And lo! 'twas Abou's name led all the rest.* 

For the loving worm within its clod 
Were diviner than a loveless God! 

1 Drummond, "The Ascent of Man." 
^Edinburgh Review, April, 1894. 
^Nineteenth Century, 1891, p. 340. 
* Leigh Hunt. 



[154 



XIII 
CONSCIENTIOUS BUSINESS LIFE 

THE longest time, the most strenuous efforts, 
the greatest expenditure of strength of most 
men is in everyday business activity. If they 
are not Christians in business the most of their 
life is without Christ. Never was this more so than 
to-day, for Gladstone says, '^All the wealth of eigh- 
teen centuries was reproduced in the first fifty years 
of the nineteenth century, and as much again in the 
next twenty years." 

There are many reasons for unchristian business, 
but no excuse, no plea that will avail on scriptural 
grounds. To say that no business at all can be con- 
ducted successfully on Christian principles in these 
days of dishonest competition is disproved by the 
splendid company of true Christians who are suc- 
cessful in business. What the objector means is 
that more money can be made immediately by dis- 
honest gains. Still more made at once by burglary 
and open robbery! He tells us that many men are 
making these dishonest gains and shows that he is 
lusting for a share. But will he yield to this tempta- 
tion to what is plain sin because he imagines that 
[155 1 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

he cannot be detected, when he would scorn to yield 
to riotous self-indulgence? In such business what 
becomes of his fellowship with God? 

More money cannot now be made, in the long 
run, by dishonest business. The famous business 
houses that stand for a century and that command 
an unfailing and steadily growing patronage are 
honest. The illustrious men in business are above 
suspicion of small sharp practices. Even in advertis- 
ing business the counsel of experts to all business 
men is: tell the truth, give a square deal, be candid 
and honest, and you will win the public. The news- 
papers under great headlines pillory the few national 
enterprises that have been corrupt, and the national 
and state laws are drawing the net tightly about them. 

These are fundamental Christian principles in 
business life: 

I. The Christian man must regard his business 
as his way of serving mankind. If in his mind it is 
only his way of making money there can be little 
Christian inspiration or satisfaction in it. But if he 
has a sense of life mission as he goes to his task, a 
feeling of divine call to his business as the work in 
which he is best fitted to help humanity in its upward 
progress, it becomes sacred instead of secular. His 
business office becomes a part of the extension of the 
Holy of holies which began when the veil of the temple 
was rent at Christ's death. After that, all the world 
was to become a sacred place and all things were to 
become holy and all activities prosecuted as in the 

[156] 



BUSINESS LIFE 

spirit of worship to God. More, in all his thoughts 
and plans God is looked upon by the Christian man 
as his partner in business. 

Christ was on the Father's business when he fed 
the five thousand; so may the baker feel himself 
to-day. When Christ healed the blind man he was 
doing his Father's work; why may not the physician 
so feel about his own efforts to heal? When Christ 
washed his disciples' feet he was conscious that he 
was about the Father's business; so may the servant 
girl feel as she is busy with Monday's wash and 
Tuesday's ironing. When Christ gave the fishermen 
a great catch he was one of them ; when he stilled the 
tempest and brought the boat to shore he was a 
sailor and a pilot with the rest. He was about his 
Father's business in the temple among the doctors, 
and he continued in it when he returned to Naza- 
reth and became a carpenter. He drew no line of 
sacred and secular, but wiped out all such fines. 
Such a distinction is unchristian — it hurts both the 
church and business; it hurts business by efiminat- 
ing refigious inspiration and the divine partnership 
in business, and it hurts the church by withholding 
business enterprise and modern organization from 
her work. 

2. Unless the Christian man's business really serves 
mankind in good, he must give it up. A business 
questionable as to its moral character or benefit to 
men is not questionable to Christian standards — it 
is wrong. Whatever is doubtful is at best negative 
[157] 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

or useless, and to engage in it is to waste life and 
its power and opportunity. Is it objected that this 
would end several large lines of business that profess- 
ing Christian men now engage in? Even so; but 
it will end their real fellowship with Christ if they 
do not end such business. Who can doubt that? 
John Wesley urges: "Gain all you can, save all you 
can, give all you can. Gain all you can by not hurt- 
ing your neighbor in his substance or in his body." 

The good of mankind must be considered to the 
broadest and deepest extent. For instance, it is good 
for men to be amused in a pure way, good for them 
to have the pleasure of the senses which does not 
involve sin. It is proper, therefore, for a Christian 
man to be a humorist like Mark Twain or Josh 
Billings, or a giver of pure pleasure like many enter- 
tainers. This is all the more so because the sense of 
humor ^ is a valuable moral asset. It prevents a 
man making a fool of himself by incongruities of 
manner or speech. Without it he says the absurd 
and undigested word and does the ridiculous thing. 
But with it he is helped to refined proprieties, tact, 
and power. In speaking either in public address or 
private conversation, in proper restraint, it gives 
delight and force to the truth. But the sense of 
humor is needed most to prevent overdoing of humor 
to the verge of the silly and beyond. 

1 "The sense of humor is a sense of a fundamental deformity 
where it exists in conduct or manners." — Mackenzie, "Ethics," 
p. 295. 

[1581 



BUSINESS LIFE 

There are social needs of mankind, esthetic needs 
in music and art, and purely intellectual needs 
which should be ministered to in cultured power. 
It is right, therefore, not only to render such service, 
but also to prepare thoroughly for it. 

In the same way providing for the needs of the 
table, of the home, of raiment is a proper method of 
service for Christlike men who do this in his name 
and within his laws. So also the great variety of 
professional service which ministers wisely to normal 
needs is Christian. Man's nature is so many sided 
and wonderful, and his development so complex, 
that every demand should be met by experts. But 
the test that all such work for men should be of 
positive benefit cannot be relaxed or compromised 
for indulgences which are harmful in the least or 
even simply wasteful. 

The law of love in business was developed earlier 
in this volume. It is the Golden Rule, "Whatsoever 
ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even 
so to them." It is exact justice in all dealings ren- 
dered with expert knowledge as we would desire it if 
we were in the place of the customer or client. No 
more than justice is required, nor is loose generosity 
desirable. The highest efficiency and best product 
come when ethical justice exactly rules in all daily 
business. It will be well to reread Chapter II on 
this law of love as exact justice in daily activities. 

3. The Christian man will steadily perfect his 
product, whether grown or manufactured, or his 
[159] 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

service in transportation or distribution of material 
goods. He will go on to perfection by the general 
law of progress inherent in the Christian life. He 
cannot be satisfied with yesterday's results if to-day 
reveals some new possibility in what he is doing for 
man. 

Practical improvement of product or service is 
limited by many factors, such as increased cost, 
possible facilities, and extent of business. It will 
therefore proceed more slowly than could be desired, 
but it should be a steady and real improvement. 

In the professions — now at least six: medicine, 
teaching, journalism, law, statesmanship, and the 
ministry — the Christian will keep abreast of the 
latest light in all that is related to his work, will 
know the most approved methods and coordinations. 
He will not be the first to adopt the radically new, 
for that is to take the imtested, nor the last to hold 
on to the old, for that is to hold on to what has been 
proven inferior. 

When men are possessed of a monopoly either by 
the protection of a patent or by some combination 
with others, their opportunity is greatest for service 
and their duties are correspondingly weighty. The 
fixing of prices then is their sole responsibility and 
all the principles of justice — to do to others as they 
would be done by — should govern. More than 
what is just is robbery. The discovery and appli- 
cation of a new principle for human service by a 
remarkable invention deserves large reward and it is 
[160] 



BUSINESS LIFE 

proper to take it, but the money value of the patent 
is due to the presence of civilized society which needs 
it, and this society has equal rights in the invention 
or monopoly. Inventions differ so much in cost of 
production in relation to real value that the civil 
law wisely does not attempt to fix prices, but the 
Christian law will guide the good man in the matter. 

4. Business has its sociological aspects and ethics. 
It is to be thought of as a whole, and every man is 
interested in the moral perfecting of the whole, for 
man's sake, not for business' sake in itself. In 
relations of workmen and employers, of producers 
and consumers, of professional men and laymen, 
there is necessary a mutual regard and cooperation 
for Christian results. Neither side can live to itself. 
Both will attain the best by the Golden Rule. Put- 
ting oneself into the other person's place gives the 
measure of our duty to him, but considering all sides, 
points the way to a better civilization. 

5. To the Christian man all business is related to 
the progress of Christ's kingdom. Whatsoever he 
does will hasten or retard the coming of the King to 
his own in the world. It is this gospel idea which 
glorifies daily work into a religion. It is done no 
longer to men, but as unto God. The two tables of 
the law of stone coalesce into the fleshly table of the 
heart, the ten commandments into the one Golden 
Rule. And every act of obedience to the Golden 
Rule brings nearer that day when his will will be 
done on earth as it is in heaven. 

[ 161 ] 



XIV 
THE DUTY OF THE CHRISTIAN CITIZEN 

PAUL highly esteemed his Roman citizenship 
before he was a Christian. He esteemed it 
no less after he became a Christian — prob- 
ably more. He was born a citizen of no mean city, 
Tarsus, and he was the noblest Roman of them all. 
But there are Christian men in America who set 
small store upon their still grander citizenship; who 
vote very seldom, and then only when it is thoroughly 
convenient to their business or pleasure; who vote for 
party, right or wrong — mostly wrong; and who, for 
business reasons, postpone great civic reforms and 
purifications. Are they not mean citizens of the 
grandest country on earth? 

The Christian man in a democracy, whether in the 
form of a repubHc or of a constitutional monarchy, 
owes to his country the duty of a citizenship which 
is distinctively Christian. Our citizenship is a real 
part of Christian life and religion. As George 
Washington ^ said, "Let us with caution indulge the 
supposition that morality can be maintained without 
religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence 

1 Washington, "Farewell Address." 
[162] 



MEAN CITIZENS 

of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, 
reason and experience both forbid us to expect that 
national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious 
principles." 

Citizens who are office-holders have the additional 
obligation to honesty and efficiency in all their duties. 
In the aggregate the office-holding class is large and 
rapidly increasing. 

The voter in America is the real sovereign of the 
state and ought fully to realize this. He abdicates to 
a party or to a boss, but the full responsibility for all 
the party does or fails to do and for all bosses do, 
good or evil, is with the voters. That it requires 
millions of voters together to govern does not diminish 
the duty of each one, for the voting is always an 
individual act, and the larger the number of voters 
the greater the field of duty to influence others to vote 
right. Here lies the citizen's clear obligation to form 
poKtical parties and to work for them aright. But 
it is just as much a duty to form parties as means to 
righteous government and to have party fealty only 
when candidates are right and principles righteous. 

In America the citizen's duty can only be performed 
in the light of intellect and conscience. The citizen 
must keep informed about political progress, about 
men and movements, sttidy and develop political 
ideals, and courageously decide and advocate the 
right men and measures. Right voting needs to be 
supplemented by influencing others to vote right. 
The great body of good voters must become as aggres- 
[163] 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

sive as the patriots in war to win and maintain good 
government. 

The duty to inform himself about governmental 
afifairs was always upon the voter, but never so 
emphasized as to-day when extraordinary develop- 
ments in our government are in progress. It is the 
day of the discussion of the commission plan of city 
government; the proper regulation by nation and 
state of trusts, railroads, and all pubKc utilities; the 
scientific adjustment of the tariff; universal arbitra- 
tion; labor and capital conciliation; uniform divorce 
laws; popular election of United States senators; 
the initiative, the referendum, and the recall; woman 
suffrage; labor questions such as compensation for 
industrial injuries, cooperative schemes, profits- 
sharing, and many others equally complicated and 
far-reaching. Many of these plans, if adopted, will 
work fundamental changes in our democracy for 
better or for worse. It is in the highest degree neces- 
sary that they be discussed and decided by the ablest 
intelligence and patriotism of the voters. The true 
Christian spirit feels all these obligations and prepares 
to meet them as in God's sight. 

This new era of constructive politics is calling out 
great leaders of noblest spirit and sternly retiring 
the old corrupt bosses. The Christian voter faces 
a glorious outlook which should inspire to profound 
devotion to civic duty. He must recognize the 
Christian origin and character of the American state. 
He will resist all powerful efforts now being made to 
[ 164 ] 



MEAN CITIZENS 

eliminate the Christian elements from state activities; 
for example, the reading of the Bible in the public 
schools; chaplains in Army, Navy, and public in- 
stitutions; the day of Thanksgiving; the Christian 
oath, and the general recognition of God and Christ 
in many ways by the government. Some of these 
attempts have succeeded in certain states, and there 
the Christian voter shoiild make every effort to restore 
them, not heeding the specious plea that such Christian 
elements involve a union of church and state. The 
recognition of God in organic law is a fact in most 
of the states, but it has not diverted state funds to 
sectarian uses nor persecuted for their religion any 
people, whatever their creed. *' A nation ought to be 
but one huge Christian personage, one mighty growth 
or stature of an honest man, for look what the ground 
and causes are of single happiness to one man, the 
same ye shall find it for a whole state."^ 

The Christian welcomes the trend of modern 
government to larger service for the nation, the 
state, and municipality. He recognizes the extent 
of opportunity of a righteous government to promote 
the welfare of the people without pauperizing them 
or dwarfing individual initiative, the wise general 
welfare work which indeed gives the only opportunity 
to the individual often restricted by the tyranny of 
the strong or by combinations and trusts. 

The duty of praying for those in authority is defi- 
nitely enjoined by the Scriptures. Such prayer 
1 John Milton, Preface to "Reformation in England." 
[165] 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

should be made in the congregation by the pastor 
and others, in family prayer, and in private prayer. 
Prayer for another brings the divine blessing upon 
that other, but by reflex influence it deepens the 
interest of the man who prays. More, since prayer 
is communion with God, the making of petitions 
upon such subjects brings the mind and soul to God's 
Bible thought that his authority is delegated to human 
government. 

Civic offlce is an attractive opportunity to the good 
man. In the remarkable extension of governmental 
functions still further going on, the government 
touches the life of the people at many vital points. 
The activities of the advocates of the purification of 
food products and preparations, of those who are 
directing the work of state and nation for better 
health conservation, those who seek to bring about 
forest conservation, of the several recent national 
commissions upon education, rural life, and other 
subjects, of those who carry out great schemes of 
the care and cure of criminal and pauper classes, of 
irrigation and reclamation of waste lands, of conserva- 
tion of national resources in mines and waterways, 
of the Agricultural Department which gives such 
marvelous assistance to farmers, and of the Labor 
Bureau, are illustrations of the way in which state 
and national government are partaking of the philan- 
thropic and reform inspiration. Statesmen are pro- 
foundly impressed that a new era in democracy is 
upon the world, only to be compared with the 
[166 1 



MEAN CITIZENS 

French Revolution and the making of the American 
constitution. 

The citizen is the final arbiter of these momentous 
questions of civilization, every one of which is also a 
movement of the kingdom of Christ. The Christian 
citizens of the United States in this generation will 
make history of more importance in human progress 
than any body of men since the advent of Christ, 
certainly since the Reformation. 

It is therefore a time for devout citizenship. The 
pillar of cloud and of fire must be invoked, the King 
of kings must be enthroned in America, and his 
subjects must become knightly in personal courage 
and initiative. They must be soldiers in a grand 
army calling out the genius of Grant in organi- 
zation, "hammering" the way to victory and to 
social peace and prosperity, with righteousness. 



[167] 



XV 
A VITAL MEMBER OF CHRIST'S BODY 

THE local church which a Christian joins is a 
part of the real body of Christ through which 
the Spirit is to express Christ to men. If this 
ecclesiastical body of Christ is vital in every part and 
in all its members, it will find expression as on the day 
of Pentecost by winning the world to him, and as after 
Pentecost by mutual love and helpfulness among the 
saved. No one individual can very largely express 
Christ. Only a church organized for all the broad 
work for humanity which Christ inspires, prosecuting 
it in one accord and filled with the Holy Spirit, can 
fully represent Christ among men. No one indi- 
vidual is the complete body of Christ; the church is 
his body, his organism for expression and service. 
''One Christian is an organ of Christ, the church is 
his organism.'' ^ 

Practically therefore the first duty to Christ of the 
saved man is to choose which church he will join. 
Which local church, of course; for it is in the local 
church chiefly that he must work, and the local 
church is the place of direct contact with the unsaved 

^ Dr. J. H. Jowett, Sermon. 
[168 1 



MEMBER OF CHRIST'S BODY 

world and of personal fellowship with other disciples. 
The local church, however, belongs to a denomination, 
one of the one hundred and eighty denominations, 
large and small, in America. Usually the choice is 
made for him by his parents in early childhood. In 
the church so chosen he should stay unless command- 
ing reasons for a change come to him. But the man 
who realizes the tremendous significance of life, and 
who knows what best organization and highest ideals 
for spiritual life means for usefulness, will at least 
open the question as to where and what his church 
workshop shall be. 

1. He should study the Scriptures, especially 
Christ's teachings on doctrine and life, and the 
church's conformity to them. In this study he should 
not be severely critical, he should always remember 
the infirmities of human nature; yet justly and 
earnestly he should secure a reasonably close Christ- 
likeness in a church. 

2. Meantime he should get the test of actual and 
earnest service in the church where he finds himself. 
Certain personal habits and adaptation may make 
that field the most productive for him on the whole. 

3. It is important to know the denomination's 
power and prestige, its leaders at the time, its methods 
of work, breadth of S3niipathy and outlook, spiritual 
life, as well as its general organization, doctrines, and 
history. 

4. The choice of a local church is for the family as 
well as for self, and for the spiritual welfare and train- 

[169 1 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

ing of the children. In the church to which the man 
inclines, will the children be likely to acquire most 
fully the Christhke spirit and character, the love of 
earnest and self-sacrificing service, and the best 
instruction in Christian truth and living? Then let 
the father and mother join there that the children 
may be saved from the worldliness and unbelief and 
even the open sin which might follow as a result of 
a mistaken choice. 

5. The choice should be made in the spirit of a 
Christian worker seeking largest service and of a sol- 
dier of Christ seeking a battlefield for righteousness. 
The choice should not be made for social prestige, 
nor yet for ease in work or giving. The mistake 
should be avoided of the man who chose a cer- 
tain church because, as he said, ^'it will not inter- 
fere with any business or politics.'' The choice 
should fall on a church which the man can sincerely 
regard as a church of Christ. 

To hold that a man can be a good Christian without 
joining any church is the same as holding that he can 
be a good Christian without accepting the Bible. 
The one is Christ's word, the other is Christ's organ- 
ism for work. The church is the body of Christ 
serving him as a human body serves a man's spirit, 
by carrying out his purpose, expressing his thought, 
and showing his love. The church is eyes, ears, 
mouth, hands, feet, and more to the spirit of Christ. 
The individual Christian must feel himself a fraction, 
a part of this body of Christ, never complete, but 
[ 170 ] 



MEMBER OF CHRIST'S BODY 

with the whole church in Christ. The church must 
regain this organic consciousness in Christ. 

Since the Reformation individualism has ruled in 
protestant churches. The individual conscience is 
held supreme in personal life, the individual is 
preached to and appealed to, and the church has 
disintegrated. The rights and the whims of the 
individual govern and the church as a unit is 
ignored. Instead of a household of faith the church 
is a boarding house in which each person pays as 
little as he must — usually a set price for a seat at 
table; grumbles all he wishes; goes elsewhere for a 
meal when he desires, and feels Httle responsibility 
for the management. The pastor appeals to the 
boarders by the menu he presents, and the trustees 
insist that he must hold them as boarders or resign. 
When we come to sociahze the church into the house- 
hold of God, then will come the atmosphere of the 
home, the oneness of the common new birth, deepest 
affinities, kinships, common purposes, united sense of 
responsibility. The services will be as family Thanks- 
givings, Christmas gatherings, and home reunions 
around the table. It is the pressing immediate duty 
of all church members to bring about this church 
unity and organic consciousness in Christ. He 
must seek in every way to develop the vast unused 
resources of the church, the army of unemployed men 
and women she has, the Lord's money so shamefully 
wasted on self and pleasure, and the talents wholly 
buried in business and amusements. 
[171] 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

This means the bringing of business into religion. 
All modern business enterprise and its power of organ- 
ization was developed in Christian lands, under the 
influence and spirit of the gospel. Shall this business 
enterprise and organization be denied to the work 
of Christ through the church? Business houses em- 
ploy a man whose sole mission is the new gospel 
of efficiency, the duty of devising improvements 
in organizing all forces, dropping all that can be 
replaced by the more effective, and developing still 
more all that succeed. Let the children of Kght who 
in the world do service so wonderfully in material 
business, to serve men's bodies, serve the Lord in 
the same effective manner. What folly not to be 
enlisted for the saving of men's souls by the same 
enterprise 1 

There is much confusion in Christian thought 
concerning the duty of church attendance. It is 
well known that not one half of the members of the 
average church have any habit of regular attend- 
ance upon even Sunday services; that "scarcely 
one tenth attend prayer meetings"; that not one 
fifth will rally to the special evangelistic meetings 
earnestly called by the pastor and his helpers. Is 
church-going, then, a duty wholly optional? Is it 
comparatively so unimportant that social engage- 
ments of a minor character, the accidental visit of a 
friend, a slight indisposition of body, a lodge meet- 
ing, an entertainment, or other calls like these, are a 
sufficient excuse for not going? What really is the 
[172] 



MEMBER OF CHRIST'S BODY 

import of a meeting for religious worship and for 
work in the church? Is the cause of Christ in any 
sense dependent upon these meetings? 

The religious meetings of the church are the high- 
est calls of duty to the disciple of Christ. They are 
the summoning of the army of Christ for further 
conquest. If all the army were there every time, 
how wonderful would be the spiritual victories! 
They are the family gathering around the heavenly 
Father's spiritual table. How shocking the insult to 
him of an unjustifiable absence! How sinful that half 
the chairs are vacant! 

But the lack of a general sense of obligation in 
the church to attend church services not only causes 
the absence of half the church or two thirds of the 
church, but it renders those who do come unpre- 
pared for real participation or real profit from them. 
If coming at all is wholly optional the actual meeting 
is naturally felt to be a small matter. 

What would be the character of the service if 
every member came to it as a soldier goes to the 
front in a battle, as a student goes to recitation 
in a college, as one of a loving family goes home for 
a Sunday dinner, or as a builder goes to the erec- 
tion of a magnificent temple, eager to participate, 
ready to stand with elbows touching in the forward 
charge, alert, aggressive, earnest! What joy in 
preaching to such a people, what a sweep of Pen- 
tecostal power there would be in evangelistic 
effort! 

[173] 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

The duty of church membership is a call to work in 
the church to the full measure of our talents and 
opportunity. Strange that it should ever have been 
thought otherwise! The drift of the local church 
into the condition of nine tenths non-workers, and 
her non-training for work and absolute non-employ- 
ment of most of the converts and accessions to mem- 
bership has so long existed that it fails to excite 
the alarm even of the ablest leaders. But face this 
condition squarely for an hour and measure all its 
significance — that is, if one can measure off its awful 
loss and wrong and spiritual paralysis! 

What can possibly be the thought of church leaders 
about Christ's work committed to the church — they 
seem wholly unconcerned that nine tenths of Christ's 
enrolled disciples are given nothing to do? Is Christ's 
work so small or is it so largely completed that only 
one tenth of the number of professing Christians 
can now easily do it fully? Is there nothing more 
in the gospel programme as Christ gave it than can 
be done by the pastor alone in two Sunday services 
and one midweek lecture, with a handful of the 
members teaching for half an hour a week in the 
Sunday school in addition? If that is all, let us 
indeed close the great building all the week, send 
away all the members to worldly business, social dis- 
sipations and frivolity, and keep on adding other 
non-workers and letting the pastor actually do three 
fourths of all Christian work the church accomplishes. 
But what could be given the entire membership to 
[174 1 



MEMBER OF CHRIST'S BODY 

do if by some new Pentecost all should want really 
to work for Christ and his kingdom? If five hun- 
dred members who have long been church members 
and never performed a single definite service for 
Christ should some morning stand in long Hne 
before [the door of the manse and should ask the 
pastor to set them to work, what would the good 
man do? He would see that the church needs a 
multiphcation of fines of Christian work, a develop- 
ment of organized forces for these, a specializing for 
each kind of talent, and the wise employment of all. 
Let us hope he would see that the sinful, struggling, 
sorrowing, despairing world needs every kind of work 
these five hundred could possibly do; that Christ 
did every kind of work the world in his day of per- 
sonal ministry needed and had every apostle and 
every follower of his always at it too; and then let 
us hope he would not send them away unemployed 
because he must go back to his study and complete 
his eloquent sermon on Christian work! 

But we are now concerned with the church mem- 
ber's duty in this fearful condition of things of 
the vast numbers of the spiritually unemployed. 
Whether he belongs to the one tenth doing a Httle 
or to the nine tenths doing nothing, what is the 
Christian's duty to the church of Christ? This 
Christian man is probably a trained modern busi- 
ness man. He is accustomed to business enterprise, 
organization to the smallest detail, and also with the 
new gospel of efficiency. He is the man to start the 
[175] 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

church into real activity or to startle it tremendously 
into a sense of responsibility. He can preach about 
Christian work as the pastor never can, teaching 
the children of light to learn from the children of 
this world. One such man has again and again 
revolutionized a local church.^ Think of the power 
of a local church developed in all its personal pos- 
sibilities and organized as business is now organized. 
It takes sixty-four men or more to make a shoe, 
but what enormous quantities of shoes they turn out 
perfected, and at lower prices than ever the old shoe- 
maker dreamed of! 

'Twill employ 
Seven men, they say, to make a perfect pin; 
Seven men to a pin and not a man too much.^ 

In New York the Casino near Tenth Street has 
twenty-eight association meetings each week in 
rooms connected with the saloon. The bar occu- 
pies the front half of the basement. But think of 
St. Bartholomew's Church in New York City, "which 
does not simply hold, but renders"^ eight thousand 
and forty-six services in a year, of which fourteen 
hundred and twenty-two are distinctively relig- 
ious, nineteen every Sunday and twenty-four every 
weekday. 

Yet there are only one hundred and eleven churches 
in New York City below Fourteenth Street, to four 
thousand and sixty-five saloons in the same territory.* 

1 See notable instances in Roads's "Rural Christendom." 
" Mrs. Browning. ^ Josiah Strong. * Jacob Riis. 

[176] 



MEMBER OF CHRIST'S BODY 

But Jeremy Taylor long ago said, "When God would 
save a man he does it by way of a man.'* "I am a 
voice! This is the formula that sums up the vocation 
not of the prophets solely, but they define for every 
man, the humble yet great duty of truth. To resign 
themselves to being but a voice, to be scrupulously 
exact as the good clock. Truth does not belong to 
us, it is we who belong to truth! " ^ 

The duty to become broadly and thoroughly in- 
formed on present-day Christian movements is closely 
alhed to that of personal work. The swing of con- 
quest for Christ in mission fields like Korea, China, 
India, Japan, and Africa is most inspiring; the 
social, political, educational, and religious changes 
in these lands are amazingly rapid and sweeping; the 
new spirit and aspirations among Roman Catholics 
in all the world is itself wonderful in promise of the 
rise of another Luther and the regeneration of that 
church or its rending to pieces; the movement for 
the first time among Mohammedans toward Christ; 
the bewildering multitude of Christian associations, 
beneficences, reforms, constructive Christlike work, 
educational, ethical, social, evangelistic movements 
are the expression of the deeper and broader Christ- 
likeness in the church which the good Christian 
must try to understand and follow. The news- 
papers give more and more space to all these Chris- 
tian forces and their results, but all they furnish of 
information is meager and inaccurate in details, out 
1 Charles Wagner, "Gospel of Life." 
[177] 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

of true proportion toward the merely sensational, 
and thus often entirely misleading. The Christian 
member of the church owes it to his Lord who is so 
wonderfully riding forth to conquest to follow him 
eagerly and with comprehensive intelligence in his 
progress. He surely will be interested in reading the 
fascinating stories of missions in books and annual 
reports now so attractively gotten up, the charming 
and romantic lives of the great leaders, the world's 
really great men, and hear the addresses of these 
men. He will read the religious papers of the 
day closely and join in the wonderful world-wide 
agitation in evangelism, missions, and reforms in- 
telligently. 

The duty of contributing to the church is another 
fundamental religious duty strangely left in confu- 
sion of thought by church leaders. There is much 
vague discussion of proportionate giving, but the 
leaders seem unable to say, *' Tithe." Of course 
it is plain the ancient Jews gave several tithes of 
their income in various offerings, and that there is 
no clear New Testament reenactment of the tithe, 
because the Christian is expected to give much more. 
But the situation actually now is that he gives 
much less than a tithe, probably, taking all protes- 
tant Christians in America together, only one tenth 
of a tithe ! 

What then is a practical first step? Does it 
not occur to anyone, not hopelessly befogged on 
money questions, that to urge the tithe as the prac- 
[178] 



MEMBER OF CHRIST'S BODY 

tical first thing to aim at is eminently wise? Many 
local churches have found it so.^ Let us waive all 
argument that the tithe is a definite and permanent 
obligation, all discussion of its Jewish or Christian 
aspects, and let us start somewhere in a more worthy 
giving. The tithe has always been found to be 
the best starting point, definite, inspiring, divinely 
blessed, and producing wonderful returns. 

Paying to the Lord's cause should be systematic 
as well as proportionate. Every good cause should 
be remembered in due course. It should be with 
the sense of stewardship of all money and goods 
under God. It is this which is distinctively the New 
Testament ideal for paying to God's cause. The 
sense of partnership with God in his business is fun- 
damental to the Christian, and this carries with it 
the use of all money under divine guidance. 

Lastly, the church member must be a worthy 
representative of Christian life and character. He 
stands for the church among men. He is the only 
measure to many of what salvation means, of what 
religion comprehends. If he is mean, narrow, self- 
ish, or tricky, all his preaching or the pastor's preach- 
ing to the men who know this man, to become saved 
or to be rehgious, is largely wasted breath. But 
how overwhelming the emphasis of an attractive, 
sincere, true, holy Hfe to all preaching! The Tamil 
man said, ^'You want to explain God's Word accord- 

iSee Roads's "Rural Christendom," Chap. XXII; "Layman's," 
Tithe Tracts, Chicago. 

[179 1 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

ing to your nasty experience. You must go to God's 
standard, not bring God's standard to you." "If 
all Christians lived as well as their Book teaches, no 
one could resist their preaching." Lyman Beecher 
said, ''If a little holiness in good men, though bal- 
anced by remaining sins, occasions at times unutter- 
able joy, how blessed must God be who is perfectly 
and infinitely holy." Let us be 

In pulses stirred to generosity, 
In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn 
For miserable aims that end with self — 
Be the sweet presence of a good diffused, 
And in diffusion even more intense.^ 

"There have been men in whom life seemed com- 
plete who have yet walked very humbly. They had 
no pride of life. And why? Because always before 
them and above them stood some great principle, 
some duty to which their life belonged, not to them- 
selves. Consecration! That is what we need." ^ 

It was said of Wendell Phillips, that radiantly 
pure knight of our own. day, "In pubUc life and in 
private life he walked without deviation from the 
loftiest standards. There was . . . not one surren- 
der to temptation, not one instance of faltering in 
duty . . . nothing that tarnishes the luster of the 
consistent whole." ^ 

Of love which is the only spirit that will make a 
Christian man a worthy representative of the church 

1 George Eliot, "The Choir Invisible." 

2 Phillips Brooks, Sermon. 

* Charles Russell, Success^ 1910. 
[180] 



MEMBER OF CHRIST'S BODY 

of Christ among men, Tolstoi says: "Men think 
there are circumstances where one may deal with 
human beings without love, and there are no such 
circumstances. One may deal with things without 
love . . . but you cannot deal with men without 
love.'' 

Love is life's end! an end but never ending, 

Love is life's wealth, ne'er spent but ever spending, 

Love life's reward, rewarding in rewarding. 

Thou wilt not love to live, unless thou live to love. * 

* Edmund Spenser. 



[181] 



XVI 

CONSCIENTIOUS CHARACTER AS IN 
CHEMICAL ANALYSIS 

WE cannot too steadily keep before us the 
marvelous changes in modern life — 
wrought in less than a century — from 
extreme simplicity to ever more entangling com- 
plexity. The rude wagon of the country village 
required little adjustment of wheels, axles, or shafts; 
all could be loose and rattling, as "Old Bones,'^ the 
farmer's slow horse, dragged it along with its load. 
But the mammoth one-hundred-and-twenty-ton loco- 
motive, made to run seventy miles an hour, or the 
automobile speeding one hundred miles an hour, 
must be adjusted almost as perfectly as the parts 
of a gold watch or they will have blazing axles or a 
fatal crash in their first hour. 

So in the old oaken bucket the clear crystal water 
needed no analysis; it was far away from contamina- 
tion of congested populations. The city well, how- 
ever, if still permitted to exist, or the city reservoir, 
where modern filtering is not yet done, often has 
water looking just as clear, but reeking with germs of 
typhoid or other diseases. Only a chemical analysis 
[182] 



CONSCIENTIOUS CHARACTER 

frequently made will guard against poisonous or 
diseased elements. In a similar way food is adul- 
terated or poisoned by greed of manufacturer and 
greed of merchant, and only chemical analysis 
detects for us the unwholesome parts. But no one con- 
siders it unimportant, though the deleterious element 
be only a fraction of one per cent or in small traces. 

All this is a parable of Christian character because 
of the complications and diversified responsibilities 
of life now. The elements of sin, in selfishness, in 
mixed motives, and in subtle evil spirit, exist in some 
of the best Christian people — in very minute traces, 
perhaps, yet they are sufficient to destroy personal 
power and to paralyze influence; often they are suffi- 
cient to alienate others from Christ and the church. 

The Holy Spirit is the spiritual and moral chem- 
ist, and the Word of God the test tube and pre- 
cipitating force. Let us sternly and thoroughly for 
ourselves apply the test and seek the Spirit's bright- 
est illumination within us. 

It is not a morbid introspection that the practi- 
cal modern Christian needs, not a wearisome and 
oft-repeated self-examination, but a sensible Watch! 
lest he that thinketh he standeth shall fall! There- 
fore, as keenly as we may, we turn our eyes and test- 
ings upon ourselves on several vital topics related 
to a true Christlikeness. A few crystals of cyanide 
of potassium cause speedy death, a few subtle sins 
usually unrecognized sap personal power for Christ's 
service fatally. 

[ 183 ] 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

I. The Significance of Resisting Temptation 

Temptation to evil is an experience that continues 
to the very end of the most godly life. The fact 
of being tempted to any sin is not in itself a matter 
of personal guilt, nor is the persistence of gross 
temptation a proof of any personal moral corruption. 
So far as Satan or other evil spirits in or out of human 
form are the tempters there will be cunning induce- 
ments offered to the best people to sin. These temp- 
tations are possible because some moral distinctions 
will always be subtle in many acts of life, because 
Satan goes about seeking to devour, and because 
occasions arise in every life when that life is pecu- 
liarly susceptible to inducements toward evil that 
some good may follow. 

Let us study the ethical philosophy of human 
temptation. The attack of the tempter is upon some 
human desire which at that moment is consciously 
or subconsciously seeking gratification or may be 
stimulated to seek it. The desire itself at the time 
may be right, but inordinate or uncoordinated with 
the desire of a rounded good character. To gratify 
it fully would be sinful because it puts the man out 
of right relation to higher things; as, for instance, 
over-eating induces drowsiness and sluggish mental 
and spiritual activity; or over-indulgence in sports 
for recreation unfits for the serious business of Hfe; 
or undue desire for wealth makes man sordid; or 
passion for office or personal power in itself fosters 
[184] 



CONSCIENTIOUS CHARACTER 

pride and self-sufficiency, which becloud faith in 
God and love for God. These are temptations to 
sin acting upon what are in themselves proper desires, 
but have become inordinate. Such was the tempta- 
tion to Christ to make bread out of stones in the 
wilderness. 

Resistance to this class of temptations puts these 
desires into their proper place and coordination. It 
gives rounded Christlikeness, perfect control of all 
the saved nature, and consequent organized personal 
power. It is an ethical gymnastic of the highest 
value. 

Other temptations are to desires essentially sinful 
or to desires exercised upon sinful objects, such as 
to drink intoxicants, to lust after strange women, to 
theft, to lying, or murder. Remember again that the 
best men are tempted to these grossest of sins through 
the holding out of some desirable and proper gain 
or great pleasure to be derived by the temporary 
yielding. It is no proof of sinfulness in Christ that 
he was tempted to worship the Devil, nor do we dis- 
honor Christ by believing it was for the moment a 
real temptation; he wanted to conquer the kingdoms 
of this world, he wanted power over men to win them 
to righteousness, and Satan unquestionably has much 
power in the world. Christ was not the only one 
thus tempted, nor have his disciples so fully resisted 
as he did. Churches are tempted to accomplish 
the noble desire to save men and to develop them 
in the spiritual Hfe by means of methods which 
[ 185 ] 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

promise to accomplish these results more speedily; but 
these methods plainly compromise righteousness. The 
appeal to Jesus and the appeal to the church is upon 
the lofty spiritual passion to save the world, and the 
price demanded is, like the hook under the bait for 
the fish, very skillfully concealed. 

Methods as well as purposes must be wholly 
righteous. The Jesuits yielded where Jesus resisted 
in compounding with the Devil on methods, though 
their purposes were to give what they regard as tri- 
umph to the church of Christ. They take the DeviFs 
weapons of lying, despoiling, and even murdering to 
gain the kingdoms of this world. But the Devil has 
beaten them in lying and they are losing the few 
kingdoms they gained for a while by paying Satan's 
price. The man who bows ever so slightly to Satan 
to gain power to do good destroys in himself the only 
real power which can do permanent good, the holy 
and Christlike spirit. By resisting, he gains more 
fully this very personal power. 

Temptation of the third class is wholly in relation 
to God and applies to faith, hope, and love toward 
God. In the realm of faith men are tempted to 
extravagant presumption upon the mercy and provi- 
dence of God. So Jesus was tempted to cast himself 
from the pinnacle of the temple in a spectacular 
way to show his trust in God and God's particular 
love for him. So men throw themselves in their 
sins upon the future judgment of God in an illogical 
and reckless disbelief of hell and divine justice; or 
[ 186 ] 



CONSCIENTIOUS CHARACTER 

they claim universal divine healing in spite of the 
express declarations of Christ and the instances he 
adduces of particular selections like Naaman and the 
Shunammite mother for divine healing in God's deal- 
ings; or on the other hand they limit the power and 
wisdom and love of God by theological formulas or 
personal doubts. The resistance to temptations to 
doubt or to presumption grows faith upon trelHses 
that give it largest fruitfulness. 

Temptations affecting men's love to God are to 
make it less than supreme by giving first place to 
other love grown great by the wonderful love of God. 
A Christian man loves his wife more than husband 
ever loved wife before because the love of God is 
shed abroad in the hearts of both. So men are 
tempted to love the wife more than God, and some 
foolish wives would have it so, but this defeats the 
very conjugal love it would promote. Keeping love 
for wife second to love for God makes love for wife 
greater than if it were first. The same is true of 
parental love and of filial love, now grown to such 
depth and purity in Christian hearts. It is only 
when God is supreme that such love is at the best. 

In our clearer views of religion the dangers of 
monastic repudiation of love for wife and children 
in the supposed interest of deeper love for God are 
about past. But there is a harsh asceticism which 
frowns upon love for man as man, and which still 
marks off spiritual castes, and a narrow Pharisaism 
which ever claims exclusive privileges with God's 
[187 1 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

love. The love to God which is supreme is never 
alone. This love is the highest peak of a mountain 
range full of peaks of love to men which are just a 
little lower. 

Fiery temptations likewise center about Christian 
hope in God. There are the follies of a blind optimism 
as foolish as that of the owl in daylight with eyes 
shut hooting, "All's well! All's well!" — a hope which 
becomes a soothing soporific toward spiritual and 
moral drowsiness and indolence. This is a tempta- 
tion more attractive and hence more perilous and 
more common than that to a pessimism which sees 
evils but does not hear God. For there are voices 
of God in the world which good and wise men also 
hear, seeing the extent and forces of evil. They 
believe in God the omnipotent, and therefore they 
cannot be pessimistic though they see all the evils the 
pessimist sees. And though they also, like Schopen- 
hauer and von Hartmann, are "men having lofty 
ideals who see actual conditions," they also hear 
God and count God into the world's condition. 
They have even loftier ideals and they see sin more 
fearfully, but they have the vision of God over all. 

II. The Fearfulness of Prejudice 

One way of judging others is forbidden by Jesus 
and another way is declared to be necessary and 
proper as a spiritual and moral safeguard. One 
kind of judgment of men is based upon their fruits; 
that is, upon adequate evidence, plainly good or 
[188] 



CONSCIENTIOUS CHARACTER 

plainly evil. This judgment upon real and sufficient 
evidence is proper. It is essential to the moral 
safety of the individual and to the moral progress of 
the world. We are right in declaring a bad man, so 
known by his fruits, a bad man, just as we are under 
obligation to declare a good man good, provided the 
evidence from his deeds is clear and sufficient. 

But it must be evidence as conclusive in the case 
of the man as fruit is to the character of a tree — 
evidence which is beyond a reasonable doubt, which 
can be tested by well-established standards, and 
which can be exhibited to others. We may and must 
judge every man in our hearts as if in a properly 
constituted court of justice and give the verdict in 
accordance with the evidence, the real evidence, and 
only the evidence. This is judging the tree by its 
fruits, the man by his manifest outward expression 
in deeds, manner, and words. 

To judge men good or bad without such evidence 
is a grave wrong to a man which Christ forbids 
and against which he warns us. It is what we call 
prejudice, a sin against man fearfully prevalent and 
stubborn. 

The very word "prejudice" is a picture of the 
wrong it involves. It is {pre^ before) a judgment 
before the evidence is heard, and its stubborn evil is 
that it judges and then is unmoved by the evidence 
or will not even hear it. It is based upon many 
things, feelings in the judge, influences of others than 
the person judged, sometimes very noble motives and 
[189] 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

purposes in the judge, but always other things than 
clear evidence, the point so plainly in sight, which 
alone is the proper ground for judgment. 

Fearful wrongs have been done to men by preju- 
dice. It is almost impossible to realize the power 
and stubbornness of prejudice even in good men. 
Indeed it exists most immovably in good men ob- 
sessed with certain purposes, motives, or feelings, 
which they think a particular judgment will promote. 

Prejudice would seem to do most terrible harm 
and wrong when it is the decisive factor in a legal 
judgment against a man. It is only when one has 
had actual experience, as counsel and witness in 
courts of law, both civil and ecclesiastical, that he 
appreciates the extreme care with which civil courts 
seek an utterly unprejudiced judge and jury. The 
judge himself will decline to try a case when he is 
related to either of the litigants, in which he might 
have the slightest pecuniary interest, or of which he 
has heard largely of one side. He is thus careful, 
not only because he desires that there shall be no 
appearance of prejudice in the eyes of others, but 
because he really distrusts his abihty to give that 
absolute fairness which he is sworn to accord and 
which he desires to give. Yet judges of our courts, 
in spite of every precaution, constantly present fear- 
ful instances of the gross evils of prejudice. The 
prejudice is usually unconscious, but it does all the 
greater damage for that. Juries acquit a prisoner 
unaccountably when the evidence establishes guilt 
[190 1 



CONSCIENTIOUS CHARACTER 

beyond a reasonable doubt, or they find a man guilty 
when there is only the flimsiest and most unreliable 
testimony against him. All this is done by prejudice. 

In times of general excitement over a case, a very 
strong public sentiment one way or the other, the 
courts will delay the trial until this excitement or 
resentment has spent itself. They hold that prob- 
ably no jury, however conscientious and uncorrupted, 
would fail to be powerfully influenced by general 
public opinion. Justice is impossible in such an 
atmosphere of popular prejudice. 

Then there are prejudices inspired by most illog- 
ical things. An accused man's personal appearance, 
with many jurors counts for or against him more 
than a great mass of testimony. The plea of a plaus- 
ible lawyer determines many a case, whatever the 
evidence, because he skillfully appeals to some preju- 
dice he knows to exist in the mind of the jury or which 
can be aroused. Judges know that certain lawyers 
always do this unjust thing; that they win cases on 
pure prejudice. 

In ecclesiastical courts prejudice rules almost 
unchecked, for there is little care in selecting the jury 
or the judge. The fact that the men are good men 
is supposed to guarantee a just judgment. And the 
consciousness of the men that they desire to be 
conscientious makes them a dangerous jury. For is 
it not plain that the prejudices of a good man are 
stronger than those of the wicked? Because the 
feelings either of sympathy with the accused or the 
[191] 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

accuser, or of indignation against the wrong charged, 
are more intense and conscientious. I am convinced 
that the verdicts of ecclesiastical courts in any case 
popularly discussed are peculiarly unreliable, and that 
nowhere has unmitigated prejudice fuller play and 
less safeguard. I say nothing of the inexperience of 
judges, counsel, and jurymen in so momentous and 
hazardous a business as conducting a trial. 

But in private judgments of men good people, 
by prejudice, do untold wrong and injury. Here 
prejudice has unlimited scope, and the reputations 
of ministers, of notable Christian people, of earnest 
fellow church members go down before the slanderous 
tongue of pure prejudice. Yet all the while the 
fruit of their lives proves they are good and worthy. 

Because Christian men judge of deeds and words 
so constantly by their conscience they have the 
persistent, spontaneous habit of judging all the time. 
To them it is like breathing to judge their fellow men. 
What if the fruit is right before them — good fruit 
to prove good character? Judgment based on fruit 
would seem a tame judgment. So they look wise, as 
if knowing more than others, and their prejudice 
judges in the dark. 

Where, then, is the harm? If the fruit is before 
all eyes, will not everyone condemn the man who 
ignores it? By no means; other people also have 
prejudices, and prejudice appeals to prejudice, arouses 
prejudice, and closes the mind against otherwise over- 
whelming evidence. 

[192] 



CONSCIENTIOUS CHARACTER 

Take a few concrete cases. 

A certain very prominent citizen is notable for 
self-sacrificing good works, for unostentatious devo- 
tion to all the work of his church, for extraordinary 
zeal in doing good in many ways. All the fruit of 
his life proves that he is a notably good Christian. 
But alas! his earnestness seems to rebuke others, 
his liberal giving shames the stingy soul, his whole 
life makes the self-constituted judge uncomfortable. 
So prejudice arising from these feehngs sets itself 
to defame the good man. "See the way he enjoys 
the praise he is receiving," says Prejudice, though 
in fact the good man has always shown embarrass- 
ment at praise. "See the prominence his office in 
the church gives him,'' though in fact, again, the very 
judge knows the good man has declined important 
offices frequently. These and other surmises, pure 
surmises of deep-seated prejudice, ,are enough. "The 
man is a hypocrite, I believe," says Prejudice; for you 
can always call a man a hypocrite when you cannot 
prove anything against him definitely. "If you could 
see into his heart you would find shrewd planning for 
personal advantage in all his goodness! " Alack and 
alas! we are now seeing into the judge's heart. "It 
is fine advertising for his business, to say the least, 
and I should not wonder if in his mingling with so 
many men and women he is guilty often of gross 
sins;" for usually some dark devilishness must be 
supposed by Prejudice. 

Or take the gossiping slander of one minister — 
[193] 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

God save the mark! — by another. To the remark, 
"That was a fine sermon he preached,'* this minis- 
terial Mr. Prejudice says, "Yes! but I have known 
men like that to have books of skeleton sermons by 
great preachers, and I doubt not if you could look 
through his library you would find the source of his 
fine sermon!" And to the generous word, "His 
spirit is so humble, and I am told he gave up a larger 
salary to do the great work he is doing in that church," 
Mr. Prejudice responds gravely, "True! but you 
know some men like the honor of that sort of thing 
better than money! He is very susceptible to praise, 
as you can see!" 

Then take the astonishing opinion, yet universally 
held, that when once a minister or prominent Chris- 
tian man is accused of a flagrant immorality, even 
if he is acquitted, "it will stick to him; his use- 
fulness is permanently crippled!" Do these suave 
good people realize how they are lending themselves 
to the worst activities of Satan? Not only does their 
prejudice make it almost impossible for a good man 
to vindicate himself against such accusations, but they 
will not permit him to stay vindicated — they throw 
back the fearful mud he has so agonizingly scraped 
off, and which again and again he must scrape off, 
only to be bespattered again by these brethren! If 
there is anything peculiarly demoniac in prejudice, 
it is here! 

Indeed it will sometimes be necessary to believe 
on good grounds of real and overwhelming evidence 
[194 1 



CONSCIENTIOUS CHARACTER 

that a minister convicted of gross immorality and 
expelled from the ministry and from the church is 
absolutely innocent and a very godly man; but to 
continue to hold a man guilty after he is justly ac- 
quitted — even the people who say "It will stick to 
him'' acknowledging the Justice of the acquittal — 
is a reversion to imbecility as well as prejudice. 

What is the havoc men really work by their judg- 
ing without evidence, judging by prejudice? 

1. Parents destroy the influence of their pastors 
over their children, that influence which may be the 
only hope of their children's salvation. 

2. Church officials shatter the personal power of 
fellow officials or of their pastor. Yet they imagine 
they are deeply concerned for the church's welfare 
and in the very expression of their utterly unfounded 
or only partially founded prejudices declare they are 
doing it for the sake of the church! 

3. Men thus cripple Christian reputation for real 
goodness, — that reputation which is one of the most 
precious and unique developments of Christianity 
in the world. These people of prejudice do little 
good themselves, but they destroy the value of a 
vast amount of Christly service by others. 

4. Prejudice is a monstrous injustice. It is the 
mother of slander, the most odious and uncontrol- 
lable evil in the world. It condemns a man without 
giving him notice of his trial, without giving him 
right of defense or witnesses — all upon the inward 
feelings of the self-appointed judge. 

[ 195 ] 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

Besides the general field of prejudice, which is 
cultivated against men, the same in race, religion, 
nationality, or social class, there are the many preju- 
dices of long standing on these distinctions. Think 
of the cruel and pitiless wrongs done to other 
races, — the negro, the Chinaman, the Jew, the In- 
dian, — because of utterly senseless and unchristian 
prejudice, prejudice against which noble character, 
great intellectual attainments, marvelous achieve- 
ments, and every effort to please and conciliate are 
of no avail. 

Consider religious prejudices of Catholic against 
Protestant and vice versa, of the various sectarians 
in protestantism, of the Liberal against the Orthodox 
and the Orthodox against the Liberal ! These various 
parties are judged, not by their fruit of good deeds 
and spiritual Hfe, but by the color of their bark, 
the shape of their leaves, the depth and spread of 
their roots or branches. Prejudice, bigotry, anath- 
emas, excommunications of church by church is the 
drearisome history. Five hundred witches were 
burned at one time in Geneva. 

We are now in the days of social caste and haughty 
blue-blood prejudices even in America — a form of 
prejudice so silly and unreasoning that it is astonish- 
ing sane people can ever entertain it. But many 
otherwise very intellectual people do very loftily 
look down upon the common people! 

It is no small matter to cultivate the judicial 
attitude toward all men. The upright and impar- 
[196] 



CONSCIENTIOUS CHARACTER 

tial judge is a rare man even among those learned in 
the law. The advocate is easier to develop. But in 
private estimate of other men, no less than when 
acting as jurors or judge, it is evidence, evidence, 
evidence only which the true man of God regards. 

The judicial attitude gives power to a man's per- 
sonal opinions and utterances. It is worth culti- 
vating for its intellectual value, for the peace of mind 
it brings to a man, but most of all as a Christlike 
duty. How great the help one can render in many 
an impending injustice by that splendid nobility to 
analyze, weigh, and decide strictly by the evidence in 
a case. The man who sees the tree, not by its few 
gnarled branches, its broken bark, or twisted roots, 
but by its splendid fruit, is the Christly man. 

Prejudices belong to the dark ages of horrible 
superstitions and church bigotries, and should be 
cast into the deep grave of past follies. 

III. Tke Self-Revelation of Rivalry 

It is often a humiliating revelation a man has of 
his real character when the desperation of a close 
struggle with another for a desirable place is ap- 
proached. The sporting world and the political world 
admire "a good loser," a man who can act generously 
when beaten and be free from bitterness, a man 
who can sincerely congratulate his successful rival 
at the very moment he himself loses. The defeated 
candidate therefore sends the first cheery telegram 
to the man who is elected; even the prize fighter 
[197] 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

painfully drags himself from the sawdust and shakes 
hands with the new champion. 

Shall Christians train themselves to do less than 
these sinners do? Will they indulge in bitterness 
and envy and fling mean insinuations against the 
success of others? What claim then have they to 
more brotherliness and more generosity of spirit 
than the heathen? 

True, it is not a pleasant thing to do. By all the 
worthy ambition and real desire for larger useful- 
ness with which the good man strove for the high 
place, and strove honorably in every way, the disap- 
pointment at the sight of another in it is the more 
fearful. Probably men of the world never have the 
intense desire for success which the good man feels 
for success in Christian service in the places he 
seeks. The struggle is not that with material 
weapons, but it is that of great souls with great 
souls. Rivalry comes in church work itself. The 
neighboring church of the same or another denomina- 
tion is pushing against you for larger congregations, 
larger Sunday schools, or young people's movements. 
The superintendent and teachers, the leaders of the 
young people, to say nothing of the pastor, are stren- 
uously working to hold all they have and to gain 
others as yet unchurched. Methods become intense 
and exciting and sometimes the other church succeeds 
at your expense. 

Now is the Satanic opportunity for envy — that 
wholly evil trait of character, and that easy lapse 
[ 198 1 



CONSCIENTIOUS CHARACTER 

from generous emulation in good works. There is 
for the moment a sinful gratification in envy, in 
jealousy, or in bitter resentment, which seems a 
relief from the hard strain upon brotherliness and 
generosity in a strenuous campaign. 

Rivalry reveals what remnants of envy remain in 
a man. It will do good squarely to face this self- 
revelation. Envy will behttle the place or success 
of the winner. It cries, ''Sour grapes!" But the 
good Christian is a good personal loser; his only 
desire is that Christ should win. He rejoices in an- 
other's gain in Christ's work because it is all in the 
family and all can share in the honor of it after 
all the struggles. 

Resisting these temptations to envy and petty 
meanness to successful rivals, the Christian grows 
into a broad and generous brotherliness to all men. 
The struggle is worth while. The bitter disap- 
pointment may have a sweeter victory than the 
achievement would have been if it becomes the vic- 
tory, permanent victory, over all that is small and 
mean in the soul. 

IV. The Test of Fully Forgiving Enemies 

This is one step still higher in love. The rival 
is one who competes for the same place side by side, 
and it is hard enough for poor human nature to love 
him when he reaches the goal first. But the enemy 
hfts his hands against us, and it may be has dealt 
us grave injustice and wTongs. How can we for- 
[199 1 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

give and then love our enemies? The natural man 
does not forgive his enemies, but we may not plead 
the old nature for any holding of spite or resentment, 
for the very beginning of the Christian life is the new 
nature of forgiving love. 

There is no escape from it; the true Christian must 
forgive his enemies. If it requires all the force of 
his stem sense of duty he must invoke that and 
forgive. If it is necessary to remember that God's 
forgiveness of his sins is absolutely dependent upon 
his forgiving others he must realize that awful fact. 
He must face the alternative either of forgiving his 
enemies or of losing his own soul. 

And it must be forgiveness with real love. The 
command is, ''Love your enemies," a command 
which leaves forgiveness far behind as only the pre- 
liminary step. All the acts of true love are to be 
done to our enemies. If he is hungry feed him, if he 
is thirsty give him drink. If he is now weak do not 
glory in that, but give him aid. If retribution comes 
to him do not say, ''Good for him!" but shield him 
as love always does. 

Love your enemies! Do good to them! Pray 
for them! Talk to God about them in the love of 
God. Intercede for them great spiritual and tem- 
poral blessings. No imprecations may find place in 
Christian prayers but a "Father, forgive them!" 
at the moment they are driving the nails through 
your quivering flesh on to the cross. That is, he 
instantly forgives at the moment of injury, fully 
[200] 



CONSCIENTIOUS CHARACTER 

forgives into sincere love, aggressively does good for 
the injury received. 

Here is the test of fire, the test of a relentless acid 
upon what was thought gold. We may not stop 
short of forgiving, not stop at merely forgiving, but 
we go to love and to love in active expression. We 
must know whether we forgive or can forgive our 
enemies, for it is fundamental to our own pardon 
from God. If this sin of the unforgiving spirit is 
in the cup, however concealed ordinarily, it is a fatal 
poison to spiritual life. 

V. The Test of Genuine Humility 

Real humility is toward God. It is an abiding 
lowliness of heart before him, in the vision of his 
holiness, his wonderful love in all its aspects, his 
patience, compassion, truth. Humility is kept in 
the soul by that comparison with God always be- 
fore us. 

It is menaced by comparing ourselves with inferior 
fellow men, that vicious and foolish thing Satan 
leads men to do. Comparing ourselves with our- 
selves is bad enough when we do it with the 
best men, but we will select the sorriest speci- 
mens of men at Satan's temptation and exult in 
being better than they are. The unsaved man 
selects the weakest and most inconsistent church 
member, passing by noble saints, and proclaims he 
is as good as any of them. Possibly he is, but what 
glory is in that degree of goodness? The church 
[201] 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

member, made uncomfortable by stirring exhorta- 
tions to piety and service, points to officials and 
even ministers no better. No better are they 
indeed, but what is there in that to be proud of? 
Whoever asked them to take such a standard for 
Christian life? 

The return to real humility is not by comparing 
ourselves with the best of men, for there again Satan, 
the accuser of the brethren, indicates the weaknesses, 
the infirmities, and sins of these best men, — and 
they all have some, — and perversely we again drop 
to setting ourselves up against their faults instead of 
their splendid virtues. Who has not himself passed 
through such experiences, which so greatly foster 
spiritual pride in us? 

How much genuine humility, then, have we? Just 
as much as we realize of God's presence in the 
clear vision of the glory of his moral and spiritual 
perfections. A humility before God which is not a 
depressing humiliation and craven spirit before men, 
but consistent with noble self-respect. Otherwise, 
as Newman Hall says, "spiritual pride corrupts our 
very graces, piety itself furnishing an occasion for 
evil, so that when we have conquered some temptation 
or performed some duty, our victory is often tar- 
nished, our holy things corrupted by falling into the 
snare of self-complacency." 

If this is humihty, then it is not a cringing before 
men; not an undue self -depreciation, but consistent 
with that very important element of personal power, 
[202] 



CONSCIENTIOUS CHARACTER 

a proper estimate of oneself; not a gloomy and dis- 
couraged self -consciousness, but a vision of the per- 
fect ideal of righteousness in God joined in God with 
tenderest sympathy for us in all our struggles and the 
offer of divine help to reach our noblest possibilities. 
Real humility is the undertow of the eternal world 
carrying us far out into the ocean of love and holiness 
with personal power. 

VI. Personal Influence Guarded and Increased 

It must be from the personal center that personal 
influence is to be increased, and at the center it must 
be guarded. The circumference of it is not to be 
measured. Horace Bushnell, by his great sermon 
on *' Unconscious Influence," has forever impressed 
thinking people with its indefinable extent. Prob- 
ably few men can know the power of the influence 
they consciously bring to bear upon human lives. 
They may see what yields at the time, but they 
cannot know what mighty resistance to good has 
been weakened and imdermined for a future sur- 
render. This is true when influence is opposed to 
influence, but it is even harder to measure the value 
of a personal contribution to accumulated influence 
in a great cause. 

We are not, therefore, in quest of the measure of 
our personal influence. The good man will always 
know very Uttle of that, and it may be well it is so, 
"lest we be inflated beyond measure in pride by all 
the good we really are doing by personal influence." 
[203 1 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

What ought to concern us more is how to increase it 
and to guard it. 

Personal influence is a radiation like light and heat. 
It increases by putting on more spiritual fuel and 
putting in more of the oil Jesus said the five wise 
virgins had in their vessels as well as in their lamps. 
The reserve power of a man is his mightiest force 
when teaching or preaching or Hving; not only what 
men see of a man, but the vision and impression 
which what they see gives them of finer virtues and 
character beyond. 

This is called influence from the standpoint of the 
man affected by it; it flows in upon him from the 
other man. But it is exfluence from the soul exerting 
it; it flows out in all directions like radiated light 
and heat. A good man surcharges the atmosphere of 
a whole room into which he comes, of a company, a 
nation, the world. He makes it easier to do right in 
his atmosphere and harder to do evil. It is vitalizing 
to all virtue, warms feeble purposes into courage, and 
stimulates nobler instincts into positive goodness. It 
is moral light spread far out to illuminate perplexing 
problems of real Ufe. 

It is as natural a law of personality to radiate as it 
is of heat or light. Its extent is immeasurable. We 
need not concern ourselves about whether it will 
radiate, for that follows inevitably from positive 
Christian character. Jesus does not exhort his dis- 
ciples to make their light shine, but being the light of 
the world simply to ^4et" their light shine. But we 
[204] 



CONSCIENTIOUS CHARACTER 

do need to remember that personal influence on final 
analysis is simply our extended personality, whatever 
that personality has really become. It is the true 
man himself who goes out upon other lives and carries 
a corresponding atmosphere filled with his own virtues 
and Christian spirit. For the Christian spirit of a 
man is not confined within him. It enswathes him 
and is the first thing you strike as you approach him. 
Take this word from Horace Bushnell: "The influ- 
ences we exert unconsciously almost never disagree 
with our real character. They are honest influences, 
following our character, as the shadow follows the 
sun. And therefore we are much more certainly 
responsible for them. They go streaming from us in 
all directions, though in channels we do not see, 
poisoning or healing around the roots of society and 
among the hidden wells of character. We must 
answer not only for what we do with a purpose, but 
for the influence we exert insensibly." 

Atmosphere is an excellent parable of influence, 
but like all material parables, it is wholly inadequate 
as an illustration of spiritual measures. The great 
earth, eight thousand miles in diameter, carries an 
atmosphere of fifty miles beyond, possibly one hundred 
miles. But man, so small in physical bulk, may carry 
an atmosphere a million times greater than his own 
size and immeasurable distances in space and time 
beyond. 

The earth's atmosphere is filled with the warmth 
of the great sphere, with the fragrance of the flowers 
[205] 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

it grows, and with invigorating oxygen and ozone 
constantly replenished by its chemical activities. 
So does the human spirit fill his atmosphere with 
good cheer and joy and power. 

The earth radiates what the great sun has poured 
upon her, and the Christian man expresses what 
Christ in him has imparted when the man is at his 
best. It is therefore with man, as it is with the earth 
related to the sun, a matter of perfectly right inchna- 
tion to Christ. In the case of the earth the difference 
of a few degrees of inclination in its axis toward the 
sun makes the extreme difference between frozen 
midwinter and balmy, fruitful, deHghtful summer. 
The soul turned just a little away from Christ may 
become chilled and spiritually dead. 

Personal Christian influence requires a perfect 
adjustment to Christ's will and a complete fellowship 
of love and faith and fellowship in work with him. 
And by every prayer and good deed which brings 
more of Christ into the man his influence is enhanced 
and extended. 



206 



XVII 
HOW HABITS HOLD US FAST 

THE law of habit takes hold of all of a human hfe. 
Not only outward acts, but thoughts, emo- 
tions, feehngs, affections, religious devotions, 
and even the apparently spontaneous expressions of 
the soul upon a new occasion — all are governed by 
habit. What is a fair statement of the law and 
process of habit-forming? 

Every act inclines to repeat itself; 

Every repetition is easier; 

Becoming easier it tends to become automatic; 

The automatic is a fixed habit. 

Habits grip and hold us. They are like the deep rut 
on the country road which holds the loaded wagon, or 
like the well-spiked rails which hold the powerful loco- 
motive. Habits are brain ruts and brain railroads. 
If involuntarily drifted into they are ruts, if wisely 
developed they are railroads. A certain thought, 
motive, or desire arises in the mind and seeks a course 
to action. That is the first trip. It arises again in 
the mind and takes the course the first took, deepen- 
ing its marks, and thus again and again, until it 
glides automatically from the inner origin to outer 
expression. 

[ 207 ] 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

The speed and strength of habit formation depend 
upon the powerful first act or initiative, the unin- 
terrupted repetition of the act, and the number of 
intense repetitions. 

Acts are willed and executed. Nerves and muscles 
respond, let us say, in that particular way for the 
first time. But they mark a course and as they are 
repeated they become easier, then automatic, then 
dominant. Nerves and muscles then run always on 
the definitely laid track until, with a power equal 
to all the power of the multiplied repetitions, they 
are lifted to another course. That would be the 
case if a man should set himself simply to imdo a 
habit without substituting another course of action. 

But what is really the measure of power required 
to break a habit? Mark Twain,^ turning philosopher, 
says, "Habit is habit, and not to be flimg out of the 
window by any man, but coaxed downstairs a step 
at a time." The habit has been forming for a long 
time. Rodriguez says of good habits: "No one be- 
comes perfect of a sudden; it is by mounting, not by 
flying, that we come to the top of the ladder. Let 
meditation and prayer be the two feet we make use 
of to do so. Meditation lets us see our wants and 
prayer obtains rehef for us from God." 

The habit would seem to relax itself by retracing 
the steps in its formation as the strong watchspring 
unwinds. But practically the force exerted to form 
a new habit contrary to the former will fortunately 

1 Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar." 
[208] 



HOW HABITS HAVE US 

hasten its dissolution, sometimes immediately or in a 
short time replace it. If the new initial act be by 
the regeneration of God's Holy Spirit, it is so power- 
ful as to justify Dr. Thomas Chalmers' strong words 
in his famous sermon on "The Expulsive Power of a 
New Affection," teaching that supreme love to God 
drives out at once all love of evil, no matter how long 
abiding or deeply rooted in the soul. Have you ever 
tried correcting a name on an envelope or package? 
If you have made a mistake in its writing it is not 
always necessary laboriously to erase it. Write over 
it carefully, using what lines and curves of the old 
you may, the correct name, and then the parts to be 
erased are minimized and the task much easier. So 
in change of habits from evil to good we trace at once 
the powerful good new course upon the soul and then 
erase what interferes with it and deepen what may 
coincide. 

The negative effort to destroy an evil habit is most 
graphically described by Christ. It is seldom suc- 
cessful. The destruction of the habit leaves the soul, 
after the Devil has been driven out, so empty and 
dreary that there is extreme peril that for very empti- 
ness seven other devils may be permitted to enter. 
Dr. Chalmers says, "We know of no other way by 
which to keep the love of the world out of our hearts 
than to keep in our hearts the love of God." This 
is regeneration instead of negative reform by personal 
effort. The reform at best is an unending struggle of 
the old man with the unaided man's desperate will. 
[209 1 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

It is the substitution of the Christ at once for the 
evil which makes success sure. The force of such 
powerful initiative as comes from him shatters the 
old dominion of evil habits at one blow.^ 

I. We return, then, in thought to habit forming in 
its largest extent. Man becomes the creature and 
slave of his physical habits. There are eating and 
sleep, love of personal comfort, susceptibility to pain; 
there are habits of work, of sport, of physical pleasure, 
and above all the habitual ideals of physical possibility 
of health and efficiency, his body's development for 
life's services. All of these are not apart from man's 
greatest usefulness and Christian influence, but 
fundamental to it and in it all. And all these early 
in life run into habits which, as man becomes con- 
scious of his life mission, already have him fast. 

In habits of eating, for instance, the good man 
will study his real needs and resolutely put the knife 
to mere whims of appetite. The waste of human 
energy of a priceless character at the table is prodi- 
gious. It is as great as any other waste in the world. 
If a man by indulgence of hurtful appetite shortens 
his life, his active working life, by five years, the 
shortening is at the end where five years are worth 
twenty-five years earlier; if he diminishes his working 
efficiency all through life by over-eating, as many do, 
the loss can never be measured. It is loss at the 

*See the cases in "Twice-Born Men" and "Souls in Action," 
by Begbie, and "Varieties of Christian Experiences," by William 
James. 

[ 210 ] 



HOW HABITS HAVE US 

outer margin, where greatest successes are won by 
just a little more intellectual keenness and alert- 
ness, by just a trifle more personal force. Are any 
whims of pleasure at the table worth this fearful 
price? 

Look at habits of sleep. There are not many in 
our strenuous hfe who sleep overmuch in these days, 
except on Sundays, in fooHsh endeavor all day to 
lounge into recuperation. But there are many valu- 
able men and women who sleep improperly. They 
do not appreciate the incalculable value of thor- 
oughly restful and sufficient sleep and of the habit 
of getting such sleep. Insomnia is a terrible habit 
and has a horrible grip. Sleep is said to be twin- 
brother of death, but it is certain that sleeplessness 
almost makes death welcome. 

Foolish men early in Hfe take their worries to bed 
with them, and then insomnia as a habit is their bed- 
fellow. How fearful the penalty for not heeding the 
Saviour's earnest words against anxiety! Is there 
any emphasis Christ's words against worry can have 
more powerful than long and weary night watches 
by those who disobey? John Wesley said he would 
as soon swear as fret. 

Some men physically have trained themselves to 
silly babyishness about discomforts or slight pain; 
they create ten times the discomfort to themselves 
and others which the little inconvenience constitutes 
to real manhood; the nervous irritability they produce 
by whining is a grievous thing. Think of a good 
[2111 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

man who stands the fiery strain of terrible tempta- 
tions in the business world, and conquers there, 
coming home and flying into a passion because he 
cannot at once find his collar button! Or whining 
because some dish at the table is not exactly to his 
taste I Or cufiing his boy because he asks a question 
when the father is reading the newspaper! Then see 
him with a slight headache or rheumatism — no one 
ever was as sick as he is, no one ever suffered such 
pain. It is a double affliction if he ever is laid in bed 
for a few days — an affliction of the particular illness 
and a worse affliction of ill temper and the whines. 
The true Christian learns to endure hardness as a 
good soldier of Christ, and in little things. He has a 
habit of smiling at pain and inconvenience. There is 
a funny side to most of such mishaps and he sees it. 
But, there is a Christian side to all of them and he 
takes that in the spirit of him who went as a lamb 
even to the slaughter and opened not his mouth; 
who bore scourging, spitting, buffeting, and all pains 
and indignities with a silence that made men wonder. 

Then there are habits of work which are most 
desirable, habits of promptness, carefulness, real love 
of industry, thoroughness; habits of sport, enthusiasm, 
fairness, good nature, heartiness; habits of physical 
pleasure which make the coimtry, the seashore, the 
mountains, the flowers, the birds, all objects of nature, 
a continual delight. What an acquisition to a 
Christian's good habits all these may become! 

And over all and in all let there be a physical ideal, 



HOW HABITS HAVE US 

as a habit, of exercising all parts of the body, of 
good care of it, prompt attention to every ailment 
or accident, and general development which makes 
a man's body the wonderful machine of his soul 
which God intended it to be. 

2. Intellectual life acquires its own habits, good or 
bad. Happy is the man whose parents and teachers 
early led him to exact observation, to wise discrimina- 
tion, to sober judgment only upon real and sufficient 
evidence, and to insatiable hunger to know everything 
that may be known. Here we emphasize that these 
qualities may become habits, and when so formed 
they are indeed railroads to all power and delightful 
life. What if early hfe has left the legacy of un- 
desirable intellectual habits? Let us clearly see it 
and then gratefully remember and use the expulsive 
power of the new good habit. Force the right upon 
the wrong with all the power of an aroused soul. 

3. But time and space fail to discuss social habits 
which are desirable; the cultivation of the conversa- 
tional powers which are the media of deepest soul 
fellowship; the practice of the virtues of patience, 
sympathy, forbearance, the forgiving spirit, and the 
friendship habit; the multiplication of fellowship ties 
in societies, leagues, moral movements, philanthropies, 
home, and the church; the habits of moral character; 
motives become habits; desires, impulses, purposes, 
affections, courage, hope, cheerfulness all made into 
good habits and all second nature, personally remade 
nature, the real nature now. 

[213] 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

Then there is the habit of happiness, of which 
Robert Louis Stevenson, the brilliant man who 
suffered so deeply yet had the habit of happiness, 
used to write so charmingly. Happiness is possible 
and may be continuous even in our world and with 
all trials and disappointments; it is certain when 
we get the habit of putting God into all things, see 
him in all, and get into cooperation with him in all. 
Then "disappointments are all his appointments" 
and trials simply opportunities for triumphs, crosses 
for crowns. Have you this habit of happiness or, 
better still, has the habit of happiness got you so 
that, like a through express train, you do not stop 
at little stations of Vexations, Slights, Rumors, or 
Piques? Aristotle says, "Many things there are, 
even among such as are not pleasant naturally, 
which, when men have become habituated to them, 
become pleasant.'' 

All spiritual life, no less truly, runs into habits. 
So may faith, hope, love in all expressions become 
habitual. There is supposed to be serious danger 
to the deepest spiritual life when prayer and faith 
and love become habits; the fear is that they will 
become formalism and empty of spiritual value. 
But this is a misunderstanding of the real nature of 
habit. An act which is habitual is not less forceful 
than a first act, but more so. Habit is the groove 
in which the act runs, giving it direction and facility 
and removing friction, but the act itself is like the 
locomotive upon the track, which has all the more 
[214] 



HOW HABITS HAVE US 

power upon the track. In religion the sincerity, 
depth of love, and self-sacrifice of an act, and its 
resulting joy and power, may all be enhanced by be- 
coming habitual. Of course if the first act of prayer 
and love is formal, the repetitions are apt to be formal 
and the habit will be formal. But when the initial act 
is deeply spiritual, and it so continues until habitual, 
it will remain deeply spiritual. 

The law of habit applies to many acts which usually 
are supposed to be apart from it. It appKes to an 
act- as one of a class, though it may pertain to new 
persons and new situations. 

I. For example, there are people who make much 
of first impressions of men and women they meet. 
They think these first impressions of a particular 
person are spontaneous and unique. But they do 
not see that they have a habit of deciding the character 
of a stranger by the perilous and superficial outer 
appearance and first expression he gives. It is surely 
a bad mental and moral habit, an offspring of a fool- 
ish conceit in one's extraordinary penetration. It 
amounts to judging by appearances, and first few 
appearances, and not by righteous judgment on fuller 
acquaintance and adequate evidence. The conceited 
judge himself is rudely awakened to its injustice and 
peril when someone judges him by first impressions, 
and he hotly protests. What we here want to impress 
is that it is a habit, a bad one, and one which has 
resulted in untold injury to good people and oppor- 
tunity for the wicked. 

[ 215 ] 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

2. Our conduct in a strictly new situation may 
also be the act of habits long formed. The choice of 
a husband or wife is made, not on new notions and 
feelings, but on certain old theories and attitude held 
habitually. We have been taught, until it is a fixed 
idea, certain notions of married life; we have devel- 
oped ideals about a life companion, and all these 
habits of thought are back of what may be a sudden 
choice. 

Or we feel for the first time the unutterable sorrow 
of a great bereavement in the home. But a little 
thought shows us how many habitual ideas and 
ideals and habits of emotional expression have pro- 
duced the outburst of grief. 

3. Even decisions of conscience are subject to 
habits. Our business habits, religious habits, moral 
training, and habits of reasoning enter into convic- 
tions of duty to strengthen or weaken them. George 
Eliot says, "Every strong feeling makes to itself a 
conscience of its own, has its own piety.'' 

If all this is true, what can be more serious busi- 
ness in life than forming habits? How unfortunate 
for most of us it is that our habits are not formed 
consciously and by wise guidance, but undesignedly, 
accidentally. 

What is the lesson to be learned once for all? 

I. Never to do a single act which we would not 
have become a habit. For one act is the start of a 
habit, and the second act of the kind is more likely 
to be done than the first. 

[216 1 



HOW HABITS HAVE US 

2. Begin to do the acts we desire to become habits. 
And always do them strongly. Begin every habit 
with all the power of Christian sincerity and the 
Holy Spirit. 

3. Coordinate good habits into a full-rounded and 
Christlike character. Do not have a bad habit which 
destroys all the good influence you might develop from 
the many good habits you really possess. The per- 
fectly honest man who is always late at appointments 
has his honesty properly discounted, for his waiting 
friends are impressed by the fact that he robs them of 
valuable time. The really affectionate father who 
has the habit of irritable temper or passionate anger 
cannot be fondly loved in return. The Christian 
who has the devotion of Thomas to go to Judea and 
die with Christ has his heroism overshadowed if he 
has also the doubting habit of Thomas. He will be 
remembered by the bad habit rather than the good. 
And so of all the multitude of lopsided, unbalanced, 
and uncoordinated characters of many people who are 
good at many points, but with bad habits at others. 

Greatly begin! though thou have time 
But for a line be that sublime, 
Not failure but low aim is crime.* 

While petty cares and crawling interests twist, 
Their spider threads about us, which at last 
Grow strong as iron chains. ^ 

Character is the sublime sweep of an arch constructed 
of Christians habits, — finely cut and correlated 

* Lowell. 

[ 217 ] 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

stones. The keystone is love like Christ's for the 
larger life, buttressed on one side by ^^Love thy 
neighbor as thyself," in the conservation of self, 
and the Golden Rule for business on the other side. 
These three laws of love are on top and are wisely 
adjusted, and many gospel principles fit in below to 
the deep foundations of the new nature in Christ. 

Habits and character thus plainly show tendency 
to crystallization into permanence. This is the logical 
basis, the scientific and psychological basis, for heaven 
and hell, the eternal condition of the good and the 
evil as fixed. As Joseph Cook says: "There is a day, 
of which no man or angel knows the time, after which 
the unholy will continue to be unholy, and the holy 
will continue to be holy. The last verity proclaimed 
in Scripture is the eternal permanence of moral 
character and the certainty that all crystallization 
of the soul into final permanence will bring with it 
its natural wages. The truth that I am afraid of is 
what all science, what all Scripture, what all human 
experience affirms, — that he who is unholy long 
enough will be unholy forever." 



218] 



xvm 

SHALL IT BE ''IN HIS STEPS"? 

IT seems on first thought that an exact imitation 
of Christ is the perfect Christian Hfe. Tolstoi's 
abandonment of Russian so-called " nobility " 
and his assumption of a peasant garb in a country 
village, where he lived in utmost simplicity as he 
supposed Jesus Hved in Palestine, is a very attrac- 
tive figure to many people. One man may do that, 
a few milHon of people might do it, without dis- 
turbing the wonderful onward progress of mankind. 
But what if the entire church of Christ forsook cities 
and railroads, universities and modern government? 
What if all Christians now threw away these comforts 
and privileges, the incalculable privileges for per- 
sonal development and world-wide service, and tried 
simply to walk in Christ's actual footsteps in Pales- 
tine nineteen centuries ago, not his footsteps to-day 
and here? 

Is not civilization in America, England, and 
Germany a true product of Christianity? Is it not 
the gospel that has so marvelously lifted up the com- 
mon people and inspired the inventions, development 
of natural resources, extension of commerce, manu- 
[ 219 ] 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

factures, and education, which so enormously increase 
the power and opportunity of human Hfe? If Jesus 
the Christ came to-day to live an actual life among 
men, would he also repudiate what unquestionably 
his gospel has produced? 

But even could we return to the primitive sim- 
plicity of the oriental community in which Jesus 
spent his thirty-three years, we should find much of 
our real life not in any sense covered by his foot- 
steps. And in the complex Hfe of to-day much more 
in which he did not personally live at all. 

But beyond all that, we surely will not declare that 
his footsteps are to be found and followed mechani- 
cally. We know that there would not be adequate 
moral and spiritual exercise for the developing soul 
in that. The indolent moral nature asks for rules, 
seeks for set precepts for all particular cases, but the 
Christlike man desires ethical principles. He does 
not look for steps in the sand, but for a moral 
guideboard. 

Let us very reverently, but frankly, and as fully 
as we may here, consider the necessarily limited 
personal example of Jesus as he lived in Palestine 
for thirty-three years in the first century. It is 
an ideal life within the limitations of his peculiar 
conditions. But let us see the large sections of our 
life which are not found in his earthly example so 
considered. 

I. He was never married. True, he wrought his 
first miracle for a wedding and his gospel has pro- 
[220] 



SHALL IT BE **IN HIS STEPS"? 

duced the sweetest and best home man ever pos- 
sessed. He leaves no man in doubt as to his 
attitude toward married life, but we have no foot- 
steps of Jesus in married life as a human husband 
or a lover, nor as an earthly father training his 
children, nor as the head of a godly home. 

2. He was never a business man, a merchant, 
manufacturer, or professional man. We have, there- 
fore, no particular acts of his life in which he deals 
with workingmen in his employ, with customers or 
clients. And these relations are the most perplexing 
of modern Christian life. 

3. He never sinned, and we have no example of 
what genuine repentance is as he would have repented. 

4. He was never ill, never in a hospital, never is 
seen watching by the sick, and this large section of 
modern living has not a beaten track from him to 
follow. 

5. He was a mechanic in daily work for nearly 
twenty years, but that part of his Kfe is veiled in 
silence. Not a single day of it is described, not a 
sample of his work is exhibited. When his angry 
fellow townsmen rejected him as the Messiah, they 
spoke of his carpenter Ufe as simply the ordinary 
workman's Hfe of that period. Doubtless he was 
faithful, industrious, and thoroughly honest. 

6. He was not a student in any school or college, 
so that student life has no footsteps to find in Christ's 
life. 

7. He was not an author nor an editor. The 

[2211 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

large community of literary workers has grave 
problems, but it cannot solve them ^'in his steps.'* 

8. He was not a free citizen with a franchise to 
vote and ofhces to hold. What vast and varied 
responsibilities we have that did not come into his 
life! 

9. He was not a stockholder, nor a director, nor 
an officer in a business corporation. Are there any 
relations more perplexing to the conscientious man? 

10. He was not a woman in any of her stages of 
life — girlhood, adolescence, womanhood, wife, and 
mother; and woman now also as leader in church, 
in benevolence, education, society, the professions, 
politics, and world movements. So far as woman 
has special duties as woman there are no steps of 
Christ to follow. 

Is it not foolish, therefore, to talk of looking for 
his steps as a guide to modern life? 

On the other hand Jesus was a teacher of whose 
methods we have detailed account of untold peda- 
gogical value to-day, never so well understood and 
appreciated as to-day. 

He was a preacher and pastor who gives inspiration 
and suggestion to everyone in that office. 

As a son to his loving mother he was ideal in his 
tender care for her, but also true to God when her 
officious claims stood in the way. Yet in this relation 
how meager are the actual steps he shows us. 

But the example of Jesus surely is not of set rules 
of conduct nor of particular acts in the several rela- 



SHALL IT BE **IN HIS STEPS'*? 

tions of life to be mechanically copied by us. It may 
be helpful in some measure, to be sure, in realizing 
his example to imagine him in our places and to 
inquire what he would do in them. But this requires 
that we conceive his spirit and apply that to our 
problems now to determine what he would do. And 
then to answer the further question whether he, with 
his mission, would have responsibilities in every 
respect like ours, with our mission? May we not 
well omit laying out duties for him and at once very 
definitely learn our duties when we possess his spirit? 

For Christ is infinitely more than a guide in a 
formally laid out way of Kfe. He is the Way; he is 
the Life itself. We first are crucified with Christ, 
then we live; yet not we, self-centered and apart 
from him, but Christ liveth in us, and the lives we 
live are by faith in him, not by a Chinese kind of 
servile copying of him. ^'I marvel to find Christian 
men denying that Christ is the type and manifesta- 
tion of the possible divinity in universal humanity."^ 
This is so far above "in his steps" that it gives 
point to Wendell PhilHps's answer to the old question, 
"Is Christianity a failure?" Wendell Phillips said, 
"I don't know! It has never been tried." 

Christ's example is followed in really being like 
Christ in our spiritual nature, and in doing first of 
all the deep fundamental things of the godly life as 
he did them. That means prayer for hours of com- 
mimion with God until we know his will concerning 

^ Lyman Abbott, Recent Sermon. 
[ 223 ] 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

us; that means study of the Scriptures as he did until 
the very deepest truths are in us, and that means 
doing the complete will of God as thus made known 
to us, whatever the will of God may involve of tem- 
porary seeming failure, bitter opposition, sneers of 
present-day Pharisees and Sadducees, or some other 
hardships even to martyrdom. 

Christ's example means doing perfectly the will of 
God in a imiquely wonderful spirit. This he adapted 
to his day and to his mission. We follow him when 
we also perfectly do the will of God in Christ's spirit 
for our day and mission; not even measuring results 
by his results, for he declares we shall do greater 
things because he goes to the Father. 

Let us further get it clearly what the Spirit of Christ 
to be in us definitely is. This spirit of Christ is the 
Holy Spirit, which he promised to impart unto us and 
which first came upon the disciples and apostles at 
Pentecost. Remember they did not receive Christ's 
spirit by his personal influence over them; for after 
three years of this personal influence see them at his 
trial and crucifixion. Nor did they receive his spirit 
by their own inner development. He was given to 
them on that day, and the results which followed show 
the perfect identity of the Holy Spirit in the disciples 
with the spirit of Christ, without which we are none 
of his. That wondrous after-Pentecost love between 
the disciples is nothing less than Christlike love in 
all hearts responding heart to heart; that courage in 
speaking the truth is Christ again as when he faced 

[ 



SHALL IT BE **IN HIS STEPS"? 

the same Pharisees and Sadducees; those triumphs of 
the gospel after Pentecost simply win again the crowds 
who first followed Jesus when he spake as never man 
spake. *'When they beheld the boldness of Peter 
and John and perceived that they were unlearned and 
ignorant men, they took knowledge of them that they 
had been with Jesus." The outside world recognizes 
those who are spirit filled as identical with Jesus in 
spirit, and we do well to recognize this truth. It will 
save us from the ordinary confusion of mind regard- 
ing what the Holy Spirit is and what he will accom- 
plish in us when we receive him. To receive the 
Holy Spirit is to become Christlike. 

In consciousness we shall feel him as the indwelling 
Christ and shall know that by the Holy Spirit the 
love of God is shed abroad in us. 

But how can we know the will of God in the com- 
plicated phases and relations of modern everyday 
business, society, home, and the church? How did 
Christ come to know the will of God in his day? 
Not without diligent study of the word of God, 
incessant and importunate prayer, and the consequent 
enlightenment by the Holy Spirit. There is no 
scriptural warrant for expecting ready-made rules for 
our Christian life. One man, indeed, may learn of 
another who is filled with the Spirit, but even in 
apparently perfect analogies of situation it is perilous 
to follow any man instead of going for oneself to 
Christ by the word and prayer. This very need, 
absolute need of Bible study and prayer, is the safe- 
[225] 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

guard of character development and of doing God's 
will in the new and fiery temptations of present-day 
life. They are the only safeguard, and the man who 
would be Christ's must ever employ them. 

Here is the true philosophy of Christian assurance 
in our Hfe. We are to see to-day with Christlike 
eyes upon the will of God. We, too, may have the 
Pauline heavenly vision, and also, like Paul, not for 
one moment, but for all life. When the scales fall 
off they remain off. By giving our bodies a living 
sacrifice, and being not conformed to the world but 
transformed, we prove the perfect will of God. 
Paul prays for the Colossians (Col. 1:9) that they 
might be filled with the knowledge of his will, and 
he says that Epaphras prayed for them (Col. 4:12) 
that they might stand perfect and complete in all 
the will of God. Jesus had declared it was his meat 
to do the will of him that sent him. It was more than 
the joy of eating, and this could only be when he was 
sure he was doing God's will. 

The example of Jesus is given to us, then, essentially 
as the spirit in which God's will is to be done. It is 
the attitude of love toward God and toward men, 
leaving the expression of that love within large right- 
eous limits for individuality to develop. Following 
Jesus promotes individuality instead of suppressing 
it. The moral and spiritual exercise required exactly 
to know the will of God by incessant prayer, and Bible 
study will create Christian manhood of the highest 
type, and the free expression of the love of God shed 



SHALL IT BE **IN HIS STEPS"? 

abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit will bring out 
an individuality unique and interesting. 

Christian casuistry finds in Christ's teachings some 
interesting problems of his day solved by him. These 
are richly suggestive. 

I. He had the law of the Sabbath to deal with and 
he decided for himself that healing the withered hand 
and the afiflicted woman, the man with the dropsy 
and the blind man, were not only allowable, but among 
the very acts for which the Sabbath was made. He 
decided that the disciples plucking grain and eating 
it did what is right. Here we derive the well-known 
principle that "works of necessity and of mercy" 
are proper on the Sabbath day. Jesus had the ex- 
tremely developed casuistry of the Pharisees to meet, 
the most extensive and minute for all phases of Hfe 
ever worked out, not even excepting that of the 
Jesuits, and like that of the Jesuits in later days, it 
excused the lust and greed of those hypocrites who 
sought rather to find loopholes for breaking the law 
than a full obedience of the law. By the cunning 
and assumptions of the Pharisees the Sabbath had 
been loaded down with mmierous rules, making it 
a burden and a bondage. So that the principle 
Jesus enunciated, that the Sabbath is made for 
man, and that works of necessity and mercy are right 
on the Sabbath, is practical and valuable for all 
time. Being a principle and not a set of rules, it 
does not obviate the necessity of further Bible study, 
prayer, and the Holy Spirit to determine duty 
[2271 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

to-day in the complicated issues of the Christian 
Sabbath. 

2. Christ decides about the matter of ceremonial 
purification, of which the Pharisees had made so 
many refinements, that it is of value, but not an 
absolute moral duty. 

3. He decides as to respective duties to God and 
the state, laying down in that decision a principle 
on which all modern commonwealths are founded, but 
which yet has not come to its rich implications and 
significance: "Render unto Caesar the things that 
are Caesar's and to God the things that are God's." 
By that principle the state has shaken off the tyranny 
of ecclesiastical hierarchy, but is only now coming 
to its own, as also ordained of God, and to be 
directly subject to him and to acknowledge his 
sovereignty. 

4. He decides about the true limits of filial love 
and obedience in his repudiation of his mother's 
interference in his special work and in his tender 
appeal to John to care for her at his crucifixion. 

5. He decides against the loose and unlimited 
divorce of his time among the Jews. If we put our- 
selves into his circumstances and age we shall see 
why in Matthew^ he allows divorce for adultery, but 
for no other cause: because the law of Moses which 
punished adultery with death had fallen into general 
non-enforcement. There would have been no need 
of divorce for adultery if the law were enforced, for 

iMatt. 5:31; 19:9. 
[228] 



SHALL IT BE **IN HIS STEPS''? 

the death of both guilty parties by stoning would 
have effectually freed the innocent party in the 
marriage. And why in Mark ^ writing to others than 
Jews, as well as in Luke,^ this exception is omitted 
by these evangelists because among the fierce other 
nations, where there was any sentiment on the purity 
of marriage, summary vengeance was taken. 

These are all general principles, as illustrated in 
the specific cases Jesus decides, that require again 
deeper study of the word, importunate prayer, and 
the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit to obtain a 
knowledge of the will of God in our situation to-day. 
Christ gives no detailed rules of conduct as the 
Pharisees did, and there may be harm done because 
we are not keen enough in every case to apply the 
principles to our specific cases accurately, but there 
would be greater harm by mechanically following 
rules of conduct. There would be greater harm to 
individual character by mechanical imitation of 
Christ and probably just as many misses in correct 
application, for our conditions are so different that 
even rules of conduct would also be perplexing to 
apply. 

Out of the heart, the inner life filled by the Holy 
Spirit who is the Spirit of Jesus, comes a following of 
Jesus in the New Testament ideal. Not only out- 
ward acts will then be a close "imitation of him," 
but the spirit] will always be so. For instance, 
"Who shall deliver us from the spirit of bitterness? 

iMark io:ii. 2 Luke 16:18. 

[229] 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

None but Christ. He will teach us not to hate our 
fellow men for what they are, but to love them for 
what they may become. With him we shall learn the 
secret of that divine charity which fills the heart with 
peace and joy and quiet strength." ^ Or, as Henry 
Drummond says of ill temper, ^'The peculiarity of 
ill temper is that it is the vice of the virtuous. It 
is often the one blot on an otherwise noble character, 
easily ruffled, quick-tempered, 'touchy' disposition. 
This was the Elder Brother's sin. No form of vice, 
not worldliness, not greed of gold, not drunkenness 
itself, does more to unchristianize society than evil 
temper. For embittering life, for breaking up com- 
munities, for destroying the most sacred relations, 
for devastating home, for withering up men and 
women, for taking the bloom off childhood, in short, 
for sheer gratuitous misery-producing power, this 
influence stands alone." ^ Faber says: "To give 
offense is a great fault, but to take offense is a greater 
fault. It implies a greater amount of wrongness in 
ourselves, and it does a greater amount of mischief 
to others." 

The example of Jesus thus followed will extend to 
our motives. Guided by the indwelling Christ, we 
will live by sincere motives and purposes naturally 
expressed in word and act. There has been a long 
struggle down the ages to fix upon motive as the real 
character of an act. Coleridge says: "It is not the 

^Dr. Henry van Dyke, "Culture of Christian Manhood." 
2 Drummond, "Greatest Thing in the World." 
[230] 



SHALL IT BE *'IN HIS STEPS''? 

motive that makes the man, but the man the motive. 
Granted a good man, a bad motive cannot sway him; 
granted a bad man, a good motive will not find him." 
And Hving by the Spirit the whole motive in deal- 
ing with men is love. ^'Some men think they can 
properly deal with men without love. We may deal 
with things without love, but never with men without 
love/' says Tolstoi. Fenelon says, "True love can 
see nothing small; everything that can either please 
or displease God seems to be great." And Robert 
South says: "Love is such an ajEfection as cannot 
properly be said to be in the soul as the soul in that. 
It is the whole man wrapt up into one desire; all 
the powers, vigor, and faculties of the soul abridged 
into one inclination." 

See the love of Christ for his disciples. What 
could there be for Jesus intellectually in the society 
of such men as Peter and John? Or what in the 
higher reaches of the spiritual life with their dullness 
of soul and persistently materialistic conceptions of 
his Messiahship? Yet he desired daily and constant 
fellowship with them and gave himself wholly to 
them in a genuine love for them and unfeigned delight 
at every evidence of their spiritual growth. It was 
like a mother love with the babe's opening years, its 
cute little expressions, its coming teeth, its wonders 
of growth in so many ways; and as little condescending 
as is the mother's, as we see plainly in the gospels 
that Jesus found joy and satisfaction in the fellowship 
of these unlearned and humble twelve men. 
[231] 



THE MAN WITH A CONSCIENCE 

Living by the love of righteousness as Christ did 
is the final touch of character. His righteousness is 
an inner vision of human rights and duties. It 
brings what Professor Bowne ^ calls, ^' Moral develop- 
ment in its three general directions — unfolding the 
moral ideal and strengthening the sense of duty; 
secondly, application of principles to action as to 
form a moral code; thirdly, the extension of the 
moral field." How slow the centuries have been in 
extending the moral field to Christ's love and right- 
eousness for all creatures is seen when we remember 
that as late as 15 15 in Geneva five hundred witches 
were burned at one time.^ Blackstone says that in 
the seventeenth century in England one hundred and 
sixty offenses were punished by the death penalty, 
among them poaching from my lord's grounds or 
cutting my lady's dress. And in 1750 Lady Mary 
Wortley Montague said she expected to see it proposed 
in Parliament to strike the word "not" out of the 
commandments and insert it in the creed. The 
greater part of the statesmen had relapsed into 
immorality and infidelity. There was no disgrace 
in the drunken and foul talk of Premier Walpole nor 
in Premier Grafton appearing at a play with his 
mistress.^ 

As the spirit is radically regenerated into the 
Christ spirit, duty becomes supreme and the moral 

1 Bowne, "Principles of Ethics," p. 132. 

2 Crafts, "Christian Sociology," p. 372. 
^ Crafts, "Christian Sociology," p. 382. 

[232] 



SHALL IT BE *'IN HIS STEPS"? 

ideal all powerful. Thomas Guthrie says, ''By con- 
version man's will is renewed. Bad men are worse, 
good men are better than they appear. The attain- 
ments of a believer are always beneath his aims; his 
desires are nobler than his deeds." 

Plato's and Aristotle's cardinal virtues were wisdom, 
courage, temperance, justice; the seven deadly sins 
of the early casuists were pride, avarice, "luxury" 
or lust, envy, appetite, anger, sloth. But under the 
spirit of Christ how the moral ideal has unfolded 
and the moral field enlarged. What has happened 
in history will be the progress in the human soul to 
maturity under the spirit; the microcosm will be like 
the macrocosm in ethical life. We are not spared the 
study of conditions by any set rules, as in the Koran's 
tens of thousands of precepts to the very simple life 
of the Bedouin. But we have light upon life from 
the indwelling spirit, identical in character with the 
Spirit of Christ; we have holy love in blessed warmth 
of enthusiasm for all helpful activities, and we have 
the word of God as the ever sufficient standard. 



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